Lael Neale - Altogether Stranger - Lavender - VINYL LP

Limited Loser Edition on gold vinyl. Lael Neale still has a flip phone and there were no screens involved in the creation of her new record Star Eaters Delight. The album is her second for Sub Pop and reveals an expansion of her sonic collaboration with producer and accompanist Guy Blakeslee.In April of 2020, in the wake of transformations both personal and global, Lael moved from Los Angeles back to her family's farm in rural Virginia. Looking at the world from a distance and getting in tune with her own rhythms, she wrote and recorded steadily for two dreamlike years, driven by a need to make order out of chaos. Forged in isolation, Star Eaters Delight is a vehicle for returning, not just to civilization, but to celebration.She says, InchAcquainted with Night (recorded in 2019, and released in 2021), was focused inward, amidst the loud and bright Los Angeles surrounding me. It was an attempt to create spaciousness and quiet reverie within. When I moved back to the farm, I found that the unbroken silences compelled me t

Vinyl LP pressing. It is the simple thing that is so hard to do. This is the paradox that musician Lael Neale has lived within throughout her development as an artist. It is the reason she became enthralled with poetry. Poems are a distillation. Lael says, Inchthis challenge to winnow away what is unessential is the most maddening and, ultimately, rewarding part of writing a song.Inch Lael's new album Acquainted With Night is a testament to this poetic devotion. Stripped of any extraneous word or sound, the songs are lit by Lael's crystalline voice which lays on a rich bed of Omnichord. The collection touches on themes that have been thread into her work for years isolation, mortality, yearning, and reaching ever toward the transcendent experience. Lael grew up on a farm in rural Virginia, but for nearly 10 years called Los Angeles home. Those years were spent developing her songwriting and performing in venues across the city, but the right way to record the songs proved more elusive. She says, InchEvery time I reached the end of recording, I felt the songs had been stripped of their vitality in the process of layering drums, bass, guitar, violin, and organ over them. They felt weighed down.Inch In a moment of illumination the solution presented itself do the simple thing. In early 2019, in the midst of major transition, she acquired a new instrument, the omnichord, and began recording a deluge of songs. Guy Blakeslee, who had been an advocate for years, set up a cassette recorder in her bedroom and provided empathic guidance, subtle yet affecting accompaniment and engineering prowess. Limited to only 4-tracks and first takes, Lael had to surrender some of her perfectionism to deliver the songs in their essence. The first song she recorded was InchFor No One For Now,Inch which calls to mind the agitated beat of driving fast on the freeway against the backdrop of th

Following the runaway success of their critically acclaimed 2021 second album Contender, the question for fast-rising London four-piece Fightmilk was always going to be Inchwhat next?Inch With a tight indie-pop sound that defined their early recordings, the answer was obvious to a band who seem hellbent on the notion of evolve or die... The band originally formed in 2015 in a Brixton pub garden by Lily and Alex, who had both, separately, just been dumped and thought being in an angry punk band would cheer them up. Then they found Nick and Healey to hold the rhythm down and make them sound good. With three albums under their belt, they've perfected their chaotic, melodic brand of joy and rage-filled pop with full-throated yelling and sparkling guitar riffs as their trademark. They've graduated from angsty whippersnappers in their mid-twenties to overgrown teenage 30-somethings with mild ongoing back and shoulder pain. Their previous 2 albums Not With That Attitude (2018) & Contender (2021) marked them out as an ambitious and rising prospect, and now on their forthcoming new album No Souvenirs the band eschew their former Britpop ties and edge further into DIY punk and heavier rock influences to reveal a leaner, meaner, more abrasive side to their cathartic lo-fi anthems.