Kevin Devine

1. Brookly Boy

2. You’re Trailing Yourself

3. Just Stay

4. You’ll Only End Up Joining Them

5. Billion Bees

6. Less Yesterday, More Today

7. Like Cursing Kids

8. Go Haunt Someone Else

9. The Burning City Smoke

10. Me & My Friends

11. Trouble

12. Heaven Bound and Glory Be

Put Your Ghost To Rest Ghost is 27-year-old Kevin Devine’s first album for new singer/songwriter label Fruitcake following three widely-acclaimed albums on American independent labels – Circle Gets the Square (2001), Make the Clocks Move (2003), and Split The Country, Split The Street (2005). These twelve songs, produced by Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Beck, The Vines) and featuring Devine’s friends and colleagues known as the Goddamn Band, represent the culmination of several different strains in his musical upbringing, ranging from his love of Pavement to Bob Dylan; Patsy Cline and Sonic Youth.

“I used to play in a band called Miracle of ‘86, a Replacements-ish, kind of screamy rock thing,” he says. “And I dug it, but I was also writing these folkie songs that weren’t really going to fly in that band, so I started to make this other thing. And both of them were doing well, and that was a really cool period of time. Split the Country was done after the band broke up, like the hangover from that. It was more bi-polar – aggressive rock songs with fuller instrumentation, but also songs with violins and glockenspiel or just a guy with a guitar. Now this record feels like all of that smashed together, but all built around songs written on an acoustic guitar, and it seems to flow in a more cohesive way.”

Following a break-through performance at the CMJ music festival, Devine began the process of recording an album with more time to work, a bigger budget, and an outside producer. Not just any outside producer, either. “I’m a huge fan of a lot of the stuff Rob has worked on,” says Devine. “I mean, Elliott Smith – a really brilliant, gifted, singular voice who changed the way I look at writing music profoundly. Working with Rob was amazing, one of those experiences that I’ll be fifty before I’ll be able to fully process. I made a friend, and that’s what you do this for.”

Devine realised he wanted to open the album with the confessional ‘Brooklyn Boy’: “I was trying to figure out a way to be unflinching about some of the experiences I had, friendships that dissolved and my role in that,” he says. “After that, it moves almost chronologically to the last song, ‘Heaven Bound & Glory Be,’ which is about someone looking around and taking stock and being really afraid of what their government is up to – that if there’s a breakdown of civility in government, it trickles down to everyday life. That song ends with cautious optimism, trying to find something in the most basic level of relating to one other person.”

In the last few years, Kevin Devine has toured extensively alongside a wide range of artists, building up his own following in the process. This work demonstrates the widespread appeal and breadth of his songs – the potential now being focused and realized on Put Your Ghost to Rest. This stage experience has also helped reshape some of his thinking: “Coming up in the hardcore scene in Staten Island, where I grew up, we always cultivated a real us-against-them thing and I’ve learned that’s really narrow and defeatist. I learned that I can go and play with these different kinds of people – with Corinne Bailey Rae, Tom McCrae or Cursive and Bright Eyes – and I’m lucky I can do that. You just do your thing, present yourself your way, and you’ll be fine.”

Release Date:

John Foxx & Louis Gordon

1. Drive

2. Cinema

3. Broken Furniture

4. Crash and Burn

5. Once In a While

6. Sex Video

7. Sidewalking

8. Ultraviolet/Infrared

9. She Robot

10. Dust and Light

11. Ray 1/Ray 2

12. Smoke

Synthesizer pioneer John Foxx has released Crash And Burn, which he recorded with Mancunian electronic genius Louis Gordon. Crash And Burn is an edgier, more passionate record than Foxx’s previous album, 2001’s The Pleasures of Electricity which concentrated on achieving a sense of rare intimacy in the pretty arrangements. This time around Foxx & Gordon have dreamt up fresh twists on Moroder pop (the neon-lit Sidewalking and Ultraviolet/Infrared), Kraftwerk (the tough-sounding She Robot), electronic-ballads (Smoke and the sleazy croon of Once In A While) and even analogue-fuelled industrial rock (the title-track). The album also opens with one of Foxx’s career bests, Drive, a pounding techno-pop track with an oddly emotional lyric, while Sex Video is set to fire-up in electro clubs any day now.

Chorley-born art student Foxx founded Ultravox! In 1975, working with Brian Eno on the band’s self-titled debut a few months before the ambienteer joined forces with David Bowie. Ultravox! were Britain’s first synthesizer rock band, fusing elements of Krautrockers such as Can, Neu! and Kraftwerk with the English art school heritage of Roxy Music. Foxx left the band in 1979 and a year later released the primitive, stark electro-pop classic, Metamatic, featuring his first solo hit, Underpass. On this album he developed a form of urban, European blues, which would later influence Detroit techno and UK dance acts such as Bomb The Bass’s Tim Simenon who collaborated with Foxx on their Nation 12 project at the end of the ‘80s. More recently Dave Clarke and Adult. have also declared themselves as fans.

In the ‘80s the introspective Englishman designed a personal, romantic style, expressed on albums such as The Garden (’81), The Golden Section (’83) and In Mysterious Ways (’85), but also through painting, graphic design, book jackets and his own, as yet unfinished novel, The Quiet Man. In 1995 he made a characteristically low-key return with a new album, Shifting City, described by Stephen Merritt of The Magnetic Fields as ‘one of the best albums of the nineties’. Over the last 15 years he’s also made occasional tours around churches and botanical gardens in Europe performing excerpts from Cathedral Oceans, an instrumental album and photographic collage inspired by his fascination with ruins and his own childhood experiences of church. He recently held a Cathedral Oceans exhibition in Hoxton Square, London, and is planning to release a DVD of this ‘moving stained glass window’ later this year.

Release Date:

John Foxx Nation 12

1. Into the Wonderful

2. Leaving

3. Florian

4. Listen to the Drummer

5. Nation 12

6. Concrete Bulletproof Invisible

7. Invisible Woman (Electronic Mix)

8. Electrofear (Electronic Mix)

9. Invisible Woman

10. Your Kisses Burn

11. Electrofear

12. Remember (Sub Dub Mix)

13. Remember

14. Shadow Dancing

15. She Was

16. Cities of Light 1

Release Date:

John Foxx & Louis Gordon

1. From Trash

2. Freeze Frame

3. Your Kisses Burn

4. Another You

5. Impossible

6. Never Let Me Go

7. A Room As Big As a City

8. A Million Cars

9. Friendly Fire

10. The One That Walks Through You

‘From Trash finds him and Gordon lurking in arty electro Elysium, a place where ennui-laden, robotic vocals glide into throbbing, thumping backbeats; A Million Cars almost bursts into Tainted Love. It’s all leavened with a taste of Kraftwerk, especially the romantic Never Let Me Go. Beneath the extraterrestrial exterior, Foxx appears to be having a whale of a time.’ Q MAGAZINE

‘There are some belters here . . . Another You is a quirky pop song, Impossible is Foxx at his Ultravox best, while Never Let Me Go is vocoded loveliness.’ FUTURE MUSIC

‘The combined work of original Ultravox vocalist John Foxx and Manchester’s electro producer Louis Gordon is a thoughtful journey into electronics, from the Germanic stomp of the title track to the Laurie Anderson washes of Never Let Me Go. I’ll give this four out of five.’ DJ MAGAZINE

‘Icy electronica from the original (and best) Ultravox frontman . . . The metronomic throb of From Trash suggests night time cityscapes, pulsing like a car-ride through urban neon much like Iggy Pop’s mid-seventies Berlin recordings. There’s a strong cinematic quality to Foxx’s current material, its monochrome moments suggesting some great lost Fritz Lang soundtrack of the imagination.’ BIG CHEESE

‘Motorik sequencers, glistening synth pads and lyrics of vague, science fiction dystopia. To wit, the title track is a robotic anthem worthy of The Human League’s Dare, Freeze Frame is Computer World-era Kraftwerk and Impossible reassembles David Bowie’s Always Crashing In The Same Car.’ MOJO

‘With collaborator Louis Gordon providing a backbone of modern beats, he’s produced some excellent albums, such as Crash & Burn (2003), and this album maintains the momentum. The title track delivers a vibrant electronic pulse which suits Foxx’s dry vocal delivery perfectly, while Freeze Frame compellingly melds Kraftwerk with Metamatic-era Foxx.’ RECORD COLLECTOR

‘John Foxx makes synthetic-sounding techno-pop with Mancunian DJ, Louis Gordon. Never Let Me Go is a great Laurie Anderson rip-off and the other stuff is pretty good too.’ VICE MAGAZINE

‘An intriguing wallow in a challenging but absorbing pool of ambience, electro and mood music . . . laced with unexpected outbreaks of pure pop. In league with Mancunian electro wizard and DJ Gordon, John Foxx’s interest in cinematic imagery is unleashed more determinedly in a rich collage of colours and moods. Every time you thinks it’s getting indulgent, something deliciously mad happens to save the party.’ TELETEXT

‘From Trash focuses on cleanly constructed vignettes of electro-pop, referencing a sleazier ’70s rock past through icy synth lines and catchy melodies. There is melancholy here and yet Foxx’s intimate and teasingly distant vocals promise revelation and transformation throughout. Everything from the claustrophobia of Impossible to the delicate optimism of A Room As Big As A City is explored, while A Million Cars is almost a love song to the capital’s immense and glittering life.’ ROCK SOUND

‘Freeze Frame sounds like The Human League fretting about the dehumanising effect of technology, From Trash is a Detroit techno-style paean to star-gazing guttersnipes and Another You features a Bowie-esque subject, the fracturing of personality. Enjoyable stuff.’ THE INDEPENDENT

‘From Trash’s synth-driven minimalism is a welcome throwback to the London Blitz – the club, not the krieg – and A Room As Big As A City is like discovering a hidden track on OMD’s Architecture & Morality.’ CLASSIC ROCK

‘From Trash may have its dark side but it’s an accomplished and varied record, taking a measured approach that achieves more control without compromising on any emotion. He continues in good musical health.’ MUSICOMH

Release Date:

John Foxx

1. Oceanic

2. Through Gardens Overgrown

3. Spiral Overture

4. The Shadow Of a Woman’s Hand

5. Radial Harmonics

6. Serene Velocity

7. Fog Structures

8. Eternity Sunrise

9. Harmonica Mundi

10. City of Endless Stairways

11. In Rising Light

12. Metanym

Release Date:

Stephen Duffy & The Lilac Time

1. Another Time

2. Driving Somewhere

3. A Dream Of A Girl

4. Desert Shore

5. Dark Squadrons

6. Until I Kissed You

7. Aldermaston

8. Pruning The Vine

9. Happy Go Lucky

10. Parliament Hill Fields

11. No Direction

12. The Kite and the Sky

Stephen Duffy & The Lilac Time releases their first album in five years, Runout Groove though ? on Monday 22nd October.

In the late 70s, Stephen fronted an early incarnation of Duran Duran. In the 1980s, he briefly became a pop star, made an experimental album about MDMA, ran away to the country and formed The Lilac Time. In the 1990s, he made a great undiscovered prog-pop album with Nigel Kennedy, lost and found himself in Alaska and returned to Camden. In 2002 he released the highly acclaimed Keep Going and in 2004 co-wrote and co-produced Robbie William’s most successful album “Intensive Care.”

You might say Runout Groove is Stephen’s most contented set of songs, except that the easy listening connotations might, at times, be misleading. True, there’s a song called Happy Go Lucky on here – a title drily suggested by a friend who heard his last album. The song draws a line between the suburban life from which he ran away and the complicated one from which he can’t bear to retreat: “I hated my labour/And I hated my life/I got drunk on that hatred/And made her my wife” Well, it’s probably not what his friend had in mind, but it is, by way of compensation, one of the best songs to ever bear the Lilac Time imprint.

Claire Worrall’s voice can be heard on the yearning drivetime pop of first single Driving Somewhere and Aldermaston. Quoting Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger along the way, the latter song sees Stephen attempting to make sense of a world which has changed alarmingly little since the third Aldermaston march drew crowds larger than V.E. Day and the Coronation: “I was born along the Aldermaston March/Now I’m older and still marching through the dark.” Amid all this, the album’s sole cover, Don Everly’s Until I Kissed You, comes on like the morning glory of a sunny Sunday you thought you might never see again.

Alongside comparative Lilac Time veterans such as mulit-intrumentalist & vocalist Claire Worrall is Stephen’s ever-present brother Nick and jazz-folk icon Danny Thompson.

The Lilac Time’s next release (WHEN ?), also entitled Runout Groove, will take the form of a DVD telling the story of Stephen and The Lilac Time up until this point and will include footage of the bands appearance at the Green Man Festival last month.

Release Date:

2007/10/22 18:00:00 GMT-5

John Foxx

John Foxx Box Set

Contents

1 Crash and burn
2 Nation 12
3 Cathedral oceans 111
4 From Trash
5 Tiny colour movies
6 Cathedral Oceans DVD
7 6 artprints of ech cover

‘Cinemascope’ is the first box set of John Foxx’s 30 year career and includes five critically acclaimed albums – ‘Crash and Burn’ (2003), ‘Electrofear’ (2005), ‘Cathedral Oceans III’ (2005), ‘Tiny Colour Movies’ (2006) and ‘From Trash’ (2006), plus the full ‘Cathedral Oceans’ DVD. The box also contains six small art prints of Foxx’s work. There’s a fantastic range of material across these albums, from the ‘Eno-esque’ ‘Tiny Colour Movies’ and ’static beauty’ (Mojo) of ‘Cathedral Oceans’ to the darker ‘Crash and Burn’, with Uncut enthusing about the latter’s ‘cruel and twisted’ electronic pop, adding – ‘Not content with being merley relevant, Foxx is still capable of being very good indeed.’ In 2006 ‘From Trash’ received some of the best reviews of his career with Fritz Lang, Bowie and Laurie Anderson reference points in glowing praise that appeared in everything from DJ Magazine to Classic Rock! Nation 12’s ‘Electrofear’ is also included in the package – an extremely rare albums including collaborations between John Foxx and Bomb The Bass’s Tim Simenon. All the albums are now housed in wallets, featuring new artwork created out of images taken from the original releases.

Release Date:

2008/12/12

Jerry Lee Lewis

Just shy of his 71st birthday, Jerry Lee Lewis – who had his first hell-raising hit 49 years ago with Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On – is releasing his first studio album in more than a decade.

As a pioneer for Sam Phillips’ legendary Sun Records, Lewis was a member of the ‘Million Dollar Quartet’ with Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. Together, the young Sun stars carved a special place in the history of American music, which is now acknowledged in the extraordinary list of artists who have taken part in this new project -

Last Man Standing duets with Jerry Lee Lewis -

Rock and Roll – with Jimmy Page

Before The Night Is Over – with B.B. King

Pink Cadillac – with Bruce Springsteen

Evening Gown – with Mick Jagger & Ronnie Wood

You Don’t Have To Go – with Neil Young

Twilight – with Robbie Robertson

Travelin’ Band – with John Fogerty

That Kind of Fool – with Keith Richards

Sweet Little 16 – with Ringo Starr

Just A Bummin’ Around – with Merle Haggard

Honky Tonk Woman – with Kid Rock

What’s Made Milwaukee Famous – with Rod Stewart

Don’t Be Ashamed Of Your Age – with George Jones

A Couple More Years – with Willie Nelson

Old Glory – with Toby Keith

Trouble In Mind – with Eric Clapton

I Saw Her Standing There – with Little Richard

Lost Highway – with Delaney Bramlett

Hadacohl Boogie – with Buddy Guy

The Irish Heart Beat – with Don Henley

The Pilgrim Ch.33 – with Kris Kristofferson

Release Date:

Mark Morriss

OUT 26TH MAY!

SOLO UK SHOWS…

19/04 Dry Bar, Manchester

24/04 Rios, Leeds

25/04 Fibbers, York

27/04 The Social, Nottingham

28/04 Tap & Tin, Chatham

29/04 Cellars at Eastney, Portsmouth

30/04 Waterats, London

Release Date:

2008/03/26

John Martyn

1. Easy Blues

2. May You Never

3. Dealer

4. Outside In

5. Never Let Me Go

6. Sapphire

7. Deny This Love

8. Sweet Little Mystery

9. The River

10. The Apprentice

11. John Wayne

12. Look At The Girl

13. One World

Release Date: