The Spook School - Could It Be Different - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Gatefold CD / Heavy Black & White Col Gatefold LP. Since forming in 2012 they've become increasingly involved with the DIY queer punk scene. Citing influences including Buzzcocks, T-Rex and C86, the new album is louder, bolder, fuller-sounding and captures more of their live sound-aided and abetted by producer MJ of Hookworms. They have toured the US, where they became the subject of a Rolling Stone documentary. Lyrically, it's more direct than their debut, exploring issues around gender and identity. Songwriting is split between all 4 members, giving a different perspective and energy to each song.. Perhaps the standout track is InchBinaryInch, a song about questioning gender norms, something that Nye's experience of coming out as being trans has forced him to think about..'I'm so proud and fortunate to know quite a few amazing people who openly identify as non-binary, gender queer or other non-binary identities - they exist in the world on their own terms and consistently challenge something that so many people just take as read'. This song has quickly become a live favorite, prompting massed choruses of the I am bigger than a hexadecimal line. Try To Be Hopeful is the sound of a band growing up, embracing their identities, and taking charge at the world. The Spook School are the shot of optimism we've been hoping for. LIVE 11th Sept Bristol; 12th Cardiff, 19th Newcastle, 23rd Edinburgh, 2nd Oct London, 17th A Carefully Planned Festival, Manchester.

'Cut You Where You Was' marks the return of saxophonist, flutist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Henry Threadgill's flagship band Zooid. It's their first since 2021's Poof, which Downbeat asserted Inchvisits strange territories, upsets our sense of scale and value but delivers whole new musical worlds.Inch It also marks the 25th anniversary of their first album Up Popped the Two Lips, the inaugural by Pi Recordings, which was first founded with the inspiration to document new releases from Threadgill. Their new album exhibits the continued growth of Zooid's unique sound. Featuring original members Liberty Ellman on guitar, Jose Davila on trombone and tuba, Elliot Humberto Kavee on drums, and cellist Christopher Hoffman, who has been a member for over a decade and a half, the band exhibits a sense of ease with Threadgill's knotty compositional sense, achieving their signature quality with less strict adherence to the distinctive interval-based compositional system that won Threadgill a Pulitzer Prize for his landmark work In for a Penny, In for a Pound. The album comprises a number of brief pieces that are inspired by Threadgill's fascination with early recording technologies Their short recording durations force each musician to make their statements quickly rather than through protracted development. This limitation helps open new possibilities for musical expression, making Cut You Where You Was another tour-de-force from one of the most important artists of last half-century.

Spellling, the moniker of the Bay Area experimental pop mastermind Chrystia Cabral, returns with Spellling & the Mystery School, a collection of richly envisioned new versions of songs from throughout her critically-acclaimed discography, out August 25 via Sacred Bones. Recorded with her touring band (est. 2021), these reimagined studio tracks follow Cabral's spellbinding career - from her 2017 breakthrough debut Pantheon Of Me, to 2018's multidimensional synth-based project Mazy Fly, and her expansive third album, 2021's The Turning Wheel, breathing new life into the extravagant orchestrations she's written and produced entirely herself. InchWith this album, I wanted to capture the ways that these songs have morphed,Inch Cabral says of Spellling & the Mystery School. InchThey're like my children all grown up in a different stage of their lives, and I wanted to celebrate that.Inch Throughout Spellling & the Mystery School, Cabral's hypnotizing voice is enveloped in a newly fleshed-out sonic universe of dreamy strings (Del Sol Quartet and Divya Farias), haunting piano (Jaren Feeley), driving trip-hop percussion (Patrick Shelley) and bass (Giulio Xavier Cetto), shredding electric guitar (Wyatt Overson), and drama-intensifying background vocals (Toya Willock and Dharma Moon-Hunter). Overall, the album encapsulates the transportative Spellling live experience through which Cabral, with her idiosyncratic stage presence, conjures up a spiritual sense of communion and vulnerability among her audience. InchI want people to feel like there's alchemy happening and to be aware of the magical parts of sound,Inch she explains. InchLike, this really did come out of thin air.Inch Cabral plans to bring her otherworldly live set through a special performance with Atlas Obscura this summer, held at Children's Fairyland, a historical children's amusement park in Oakland that her own mot