TAPETE RECORDS - Forced Exposure

$16.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 3/17/2023

Downpilot is ostensibly the solo project of singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and recording/mix engineer Paul Hiraga. For the last four albums, Hiraga has recorded and mixed single-handedly, which has given his work a seasoned clarity, and his seventh album, The Forecast, is the boldest, most exquisitely crafted Downpilot album to date. A trip across multiple decades with influences subtly ranging from the melodic Laurel Canyon-esque ballads ("Balancer"), to Baroque and sunshine pop of the late '60s and '70s ("Strangers Hotel"), to '90s Britpop ("Red Desert"), all with a 21st-Century spin, it's nothing less than an achievement that The Forecast hangs together so wonderfully as a cohesive body of work. The crystalline intro to "Black Eye", the album's opener, showcases Hiraga's voice, which has a richness and raspy expressiveness that has never sounded better than it does on this album. Hiraga has long been exploring a range of themes in his songwriting: the inevitability of change, the mystery and beauty of nature, the varied histories of places and people, the complexity of human relationships, and the uncertainty of the future. He is a Seattle-based artist, and the Pacific Northwest is a palpable presence -- it has gotten into his blood, and it seeps into the songs. With the sparse and delightfully rhythmic "Totems," he evokes the distant past of the region, interweaving it with individual and personal narratives. The intoxicated twang of "Night Shade" underpins a lament on things lost, while shimmery guitar and three-part vocals on "Balancer" take a bow to CSN, making a layered bed for a poetic love song. The melodic chorus of "Strangers Hotel," a symphony of strings, piano, and obscure oddball keyboards underpins a philosophical exploration of memory and the nature of reality. One of the albums most exciting moments appears with "Red Desert," a desolate urban vision with a transcendent violin from virtuoso Melinda Rice, who contributes string parts on several songs. Hiraga has also included longtime Downpilot members Jeff Brown and Anne Marie Ruljancich (Walkabouts) along with Terry de Castro (The Wedding Present) to add a few vocal nuances throughout the album, with Brown's harmonies adding a soaring quality to "Favorite Neighborhood." Ending with the title track, this may not be the sunniest of forecasts but it is not without hope. Ultimately this is a life-affirming album that dips effortlessly into different styles while maintaining Downpilot's unmistakable musical identity. Loyal fans will not be disappointed, as The Forecast contains plenty of signature sounds, themes, and motifs. But this new collection of superbly crafted pop songs could also open the field to new listeners.

$26.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 3/17/2023

LP version. Downpilot is ostensibly the solo project of singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and recording/mix engineer Paul Hiraga. For the last four albums, Hiraga has recorded and mixed single-handedly, which has given his work a seasoned clarity, and his seventh album, The Forecast, is the boldest, most exquisitely crafted Downpilot album to date. A trip across multiple decades with influences subtly ranging from the melodic Laurel Canyon-esque ballads ("Balancer"), to Baroque and sunshine pop of the late '60s and '70s ("Strangers Hotel"), to '90s Britpop ("Red Desert"), all with a 21st-Century spin, it's nothing less than an achievement that The Forecast hangs together so wonderfully as a cohesive body of work. The crystalline intro to "Black Eye", the album's opener, showcases Hiraga's voice, which has a richness and raspy expressiveness that has never sounded better than it does on this album. Hiraga has long been exploring a range of themes in his songwriting: the inevitability of change, the mystery and beauty of nature, the varied histories of places and people, the complexity of human relationships, and the uncertainty of the future. He is a Seattle-based artist, and the Pacific Northwest is a palpable presence -- it has gotten into his blood, and it seeps into the songs. With the sparse and delightfully rhythmic "Totems," he evokes the distant past of the region, interweaving it with individual and personal narratives. The intoxicated twang of "Night Shade" underpins a lament on things lost, while shimmery guitar and three-part vocals on "Balancer" take a bow to CSN, making a layered bed for a poetic love song. The melodic chorus of "Strangers Hotel," a symphony of strings, piano, and obscure oddball keyboards underpins a philosophical exploration of memory and the nature of reality. One of the albums most exciting moments appears with "Red Desert," a desolate urban vision with a transcendent violin from virtuoso Melinda Rice, who contributes string parts on several songs. Hiraga has also included longtime Downpilot members Jeff Brown and Anne Marie Ruljancich (Walkabouts) along with Terry de Castro (The Wedding Present) to add a few vocal nuances throughout the album, with Brown's harmonies adding a soaring quality to "Favorite Neighborhood." Ending with the title track, this may not be the sunniest of forecasts but it is not without hope. Ultimately this is a life-affirming album that dips effortlessly into different styles while maintaining Downpilot's unmistakable musical identity. Loyal fans will not be disappointed, as The Forecast contains plenty of signature sounds, themes, and motifs. But this new collection of superbly crafted pop songs could also open the field to new listeners.

$16.50 LOW STOCK LEVEL

Acclaimed Australian singer-songwriter Robert Forster releases his eighth solo album, The Candle And The Flame. It's an album for Forster that has taken a very different path in creating than his previous works. The first single is titled "She's A Fighter". It reveals only part of what became a journey of creating music with family and friends with a need to find joy and solace in the face of adversity. Robert explains: "'She's A Fighter' is the last song I wrote for The Candle And The Flame album. I wrote the music for it in June 2021. I liked the tune and the quick energy of the song, but I didn't know yet what it was going to be about. In early July, Karin Bäumler, my wife and musical companion for thirty-two years, received a cancer diagnosis. In late July, with a series of chemotherapy sessions about to begin, Karin talked of fighting for her health and a path through chemotherapy to recovery. The phrase, 'She's A Fighter' came to me. I liked it. And I knew immediately that it would work with my new melody. I needed just one other line for the lyric. 'Fighting for good.' The song was finished. I had written my first two-line song. I had just out-Ramoned The Ramones! Because the song has so much meaning to us, we decided to record it as a family. The only time this happens on the album. Karin sings and plays xylophone. Our daughter Loretta plays electric guitar. Our son Louis plays guitar, bass and percussion. And I strum an acoustic guitar fiercely and sing. And that's 'She's a Fighter'." That coming together musically as a family is captured in the video for "She's A Fighter". The Candle And The Flame consists of nine songs written by Robert. Produced by Robert, Karin Bäumler, and Louis Forster (The Goon Sax), the album was mixed by Victor Van Vugt (Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, PJ Harvey) and features former Go-Betweens and Warm Nights bass player Adele Pickvance as well as Scott Bromiley and Luke McDonald (The John Steele Singers), who worked on Robert's Inferno (TR 429CD/LP, 2019) and Songs To Play (TR 324CD/LP, 2015) albums. "The recording sessions for the album were done sporadically over six months. Sometimes just one or two days a month. As that was all Karin's strength and condition allowed her to do. So we had to record 'live', catching magical moments and going for 'feel'. And that became the sound of the album." says Robert.

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Acclaimed Australian singer-songwriter Robert Forster releases his eighth solo album, The Candle And The Flame. It's an album for Forster that has taken a very different path in creating than his previous works. The first single is titled "She's A Fighter". It reveals only part of what became a journey of creating music with family and friends with a need to find joy and solace in the face of adversity. Robert explains: "'She's A Fighter' is the last song I wrote for The Candle And The Flame album. I wrote the music for it in June 2021. I liked the tune and the quick energy of the song, but I didn't know yet what it was going to be about. In early July, Karin Bäumler, my wife and musical companion for thirty-two years, received a cancer diagnosis. In late July, with a series of chemotherapy sessions about to begin, Karin talked of fighting for her health and a path through chemotherapy to recovery. The phrase, 'She's A Fighter' came to me. I liked it. And I knew immediately that it would work with my new melody. I needed just one other line for the lyric. 'Fighting for good.' The song was finished. I had written my first two-line song. I had just out-Ramoned The Ramones! Because the song has so much meaning to us, we decided to record it as a family. The only time this happens on the album. Karin sings and plays xylophone. Our daughter Loretta plays electric guitar. Our son Louis plays guitar, bass and percussion. And I strum an acoustic guitar fiercely and sing. And that's 'She's a Fighter'." That coming together musically as a family is captured in the video for "She's A Fighter". The Candle And The Flame consists of nine songs written by Robert. Produced by Robert, Karin Bäumler, and Louis Forster (The Goon Sax), the album was mixed by Victor Van Vugt (Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, PJ Harvey) and features former Go-Betweens and Warm Nights bass player Adele Pickvance as well as Scott Bromiley and Luke McDonald (The John Steele Singers), who worked on Robert's Inferno (TR 429CD/LP, 2019) and Songs To Play (TR 324CD/LP, 2015) albums. "The recording sessions for the album were done sporadically over six months. Sometimes just one or two days a month. As that was all Karin's strength and condition allowed her to do. So we had to record 'live', catching magical moments and going for 'feel'. And that became the sound of the album." says Robert.

$16.50 IN STOCK

"If I could be in any other band, it would be BMX Bandits," Kurt Cobain allegedly said. The BMX Bandits have been around in varying formations since 1986 and come from great Scottish guitar pop lineage. With Duglas T. Stewart as the focal point, the band has been releasing great indie pop albums irregularly since 1989.

"... In between live images of the moon mission and reports the BBC were screening episodes of The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe starring Robert Hoffmann, a 1965 serialized telling of the classic tale of a man lost so far from home, it felt an appropriate choice of program. The series was a French German production and for the BBC to broadcast it Hoffmann's dialogue had to be replaced in English. To do this they didn't have the option to just replace the voice and keep the original music and sound effects, everything had to be replaced. A new haunting soundtrack was produced by Gian Piero Reverberi and Robert Mellin . . . It was a starting point in setting an aesthetic that runs through so much that I love in music and also in a lot of what I have done. Since then, music composed/created for film and television has been a major passion and pleasure in my life and I always wanted to have an opportunity to work in this field. Mark MacNicol, Dreaded Light's writer and director approached me through a mutual friend to see if I would be interested in supplying original music for his debut film. At that point it became about both of us making a leap of faith, deciding that we trusted each other. I knew I needed a collaborator to help bring my ideas and themes to life and to bring interesting and to also bring sympathetic ideas of their own to the project. And so, I asked Andrew Pattie to work with me on the soundtrack. Andrew can play a lot of instruments well, is a great singer and has natural musicality. We loved and connected with the emotional content in the story and we found our first musical theme quite quickly. It was a reaction to imagining an opening titles sequence that would set a mood and tone for everything that would follow. This theme mutates and resurfaces at various points throughout the film. After that we found other themes that we connected to the emotions and physicality of the central characters. As well as the instrumental themes you will find two songs on this album..." --Duglas T Stewart, Summer 2022

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. "If I could be in any other band, it would be BMX Bandits," Kurt Cobain allegedly said. The BMX Bandits have been around in varying formations since 1986 and come from great Scottish guitar pop lineage. With Duglas T. Stewart as the focal point, the band has been releasing great indie pop albums irregularly since 1989.

"... In between live images of the moon mission and reports the BBC were screening episodes of The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe starring Robert Hoffmann, a 1965 serialized telling of the classic tale of a man lost so far from home, it felt an appropriate choice of program. The series was a French German production and for the BBC to broadcast it Hoffmann's dialogue had to be replaced in English. To do this they didn't have the option to just replace the voice and keep the original music and sound effects, everything had to be replaced. A new haunting soundtrack was produced by Gian Piero Reverberi and Robert Mellin . . . It was a starting point in setting an aesthetic that runs through so much that I love in music and also in a lot of what I have done. Since then, music composed/created for film and television has been a major passion and pleasure in my life and I always wanted to have an opportunity to work in this field. Mark MacNicol, Dreaded Light's writer and director approached me through a mutual friend to see if I would be interested in supplying original music for his debut film. At that point it became about both of us making a leap of faith, deciding that we trusted each other. I knew I needed a collaborator to help bring my ideas and themes to life and to bring interesting and to also bring sympathetic ideas of their own to the project. And so, I asked Andrew Pattie to work with me on the soundtrack. Andrew can play a lot of instruments well, is a great singer and has natural musicality. We loved and connected with the emotional content in the story and we found our first musical theme quite quickly. It was a reaction to imagining an opening titles sequence that would set a mood and tone for everything that would follow. This theme mutates and resurfaces at various points throughout the film. After that we found other themes that we connected to the emotions and physicality of the central characters. As well as the instrumental themes you will find two songs on this album..." --Duglas T Stewart, Summer 2022

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Nick Garrie was discovered in the late '60s while busking in the South of France as a backpacker. His legendary album The Nightmare Of J.B. Stanislas (TR 437CD/LP) was to be released in 1969 on the no less legendary French label Disc'Az. However, due to the suicide of the label's founder Lucien Morisse, only about 100 copies of this psych pop/soft rock masterpiece came into circulation. A cult album in the truest sense of the word which has been re-released several times, and rightly so. After that Garrie finished his studies and worked as a teacher, ski instructor, and owned a hot air balloon company as well. Gradually, a new generation of music fans and musicians came to appreciate Garrie's work, he was collaborating with the likes of Duglas T. Stewart (BMX Bandits), Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub), Francis McDonald (Teenage Fanclub), and Gary Olson (The Ladybug Transistor) and releasing critically acclaimed albums in recent years. The latest find from the Nick Garrie cosmos is a session he recorded in Portugal at the beginning of the millennium: Summer Nights: The Lost Portuguese Session.

Nick about these recordings: "'Love In My Eyes'turned out to be our wedding song followed by three beautiful children. Of course, the music stopped. I was too busy with kids and working at my own balloon business. And then one summer we went to a lovely village in North Portugal where we picked tomatoes from the field. One night I went out to a '60s type bodega run by a fierce 80 year old with a big stick. He was watching me watch a guitarist and asked me if I played 'a little'. He pulled out a guitar from under the counter and I sang 'Deeper Tones of Blue' and I was home for the first time since I recorded Stanislas all those years ago. Sure enough someone asked me if I'd like to make a record and I said yes provided we have the Portuguese guitar which I'd fallen in love with. We recorded on the top floor of a block of flats with the local bus rattling round the corner. I slept on a bench and when we finished, I took everybody out for dinner . . . Well, the album went nowhere and lay on my shelf for 20 years until someone wrote in asking for it. I listened and loved that Portuguese guitar all over again..."

$16.50 IN STOCK

Nick Garrie was discovered in the late '60s while busking in the South of France as a backpacker. His legendary album The Nightmare Of J.B. Stanislas (TR 437CD/LP) was to be released in 1969 on the no less legendary French label Disc'Az. However, due to the suicide of the label's founder Lucien Morisse, only about 100 copies of this psych pop/soft rock masterpiece came into circulation. A cult album in the truest sense of the word which has been re-released several times, and rightly so. After that Garrie finished his studies and worked as a teacher, ski instructor, and owned a hot air balloon company as well. Gradually, a new generation of music fans and musicians came to appreciate Garrie's work, he was collaborating with the likes of Duglas T. Stewart (BMX Bandits), Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub), Francis McDonald (Teenage Fanclub), and Gary Olson (The Ladybug Transistor) and releasing critically acclaimed albums in recent years. The latest find from the Nick Garrie cosmos is a session he recorded in Portugal at the beginning of the millennium: Summer Nights: The Lost Portuguese Session.

Nick about these recordings: "'Love In My Eyes'turned out to be our wedding song followed by three beautiful children. Of course, the music stopped. I was too busy with kids and working at my own balloon business. And then one summer we went to a lovely village in North Portugal where we picked tomatoes from the field. One night I went out to a '60s type bodega run by a fierce 80 year old with a big stick. He was watching me watch a guitarist and asked me if I played 'a little'. He pulled out a guitar from under the counter and I sang 'Deeper Tones of Blue' and I was home for the first time since I recorded Stanislas all those years ago. Sure enough someone asked me if I'd like to make a record and I said yes provided we have the Portuguese guitar which I'd fallen in love with. We recorded on the top floor of a block of flats with the local bus rattling round the corner. I slept on a bench and when we finished, I took everybody out for dinner . . . Well, the album went nowhere and lay on my shelf for 20 years until someone wrote in asking for it. I listened and loved that Portuguese guitar all over again..."

$35.00 IN STOCK

Double LP version. Long time no hear: after an extended hiatus and just the occasional gig, Robocop Kraus have rewired and reunited. They're back in the game. Almost a quarter of a century has passed since the band was formed, a period which saw them release on labels like L'Age D'Or, Epitaph, and Anti. Now they have put together a compilation featuring all of the tracks which, for one reason or another, were not available on their regular albums, with an intriguing number of rarities and previously unreleased material. Meticulously detailed liner notes courtesy of the band. Artwork by Lorenzo Zimmermann.

"Why Robocop Kraus became the love of my life. Good question, if indeed it is a question (no question mark in sight): Founded in the late 1990s by members of former (secondary modern and grammar) school bands in the small Middle Franconian town of Hersbruck, endowed with the most rudimentary technical skills on their respective instruments (the deal was that every band member would play an instrument he had yet to master) and unafraid of hammering out songs from blatantly pilfered or well-worn musical ideas, the band was, to all intents and purposes, set up to fail. Nevertheless, Robocop Kraus became the love of our lives: five albums between the years of 1999 and 2007, the first on the band's own label Swing Deluxe, the last on the internationally renowned Epitaph label. Hundreds of shows across Europe, the USA, Russia, and Japan. Encounters and friendships with people and bands, adventures and events in squats, bars and clubs. Enough answers? Things quietened down in 2010, a lengthy break with just the odd show here and there. But last year, 2021, we had to concede that Robocop Kraus really are the love of our lives: a concert request was spontaneously accepted -- surprising even the promoter, not to mention ourselves. Back to the rehearsal room. Now we are six and we have more instruments too. We had to listen back to the old songs so we could practice, and as we rummaged through the archives we happened upon the 28 songs now gathered here together for you. They range from our very first recordings to songs for (and in) 2022. EPs, compilation tracks, a few all-time faves like 'Poor Soul Relax' and previously unreleased songs or alternative versions..."

$20.00 IN STOCK

Long time no hear: after an extended hiatus and just the occasional gig, Robocop Kraus have rewired and reunited. They're back in the game. Almost a quarter of a century has passed since the band was formed, a period which saw them release on labels like L'Age D'Or, Epitaph, and Anti. Now they have put together a compilation featuring all of the tracks which, for one reason or another, were not available on their regular albums, with an intriguing number of rarities and previously unreleased material. Meticulously detailed liner notes courtesy of the band. Artwork by Lorenzo Zimmermann.

"Why Robocop Kraus became the love of my life. Good question, if indeed it is a question (no question mark in sight): Founded in the late 1990s by members of former (secondary modern and grammar) school bands in the small Middle Franconian town of Hersbruck, endowed with the most rudimentary technical skills on their respective instruments (the deal was that every band member would play an instrument he had yet to master) and unafraid of hammering out songs from blatantly pilfered or well-worn musical ideas, the band was, to all intents and purposes, set up to fail. Nevertheless, Robocop Kraus became the love of our lives: five albums between the years of 1999 and 2007, the first on the band's own label Swing Deluxe, the last on the internationally renowned Epitaph label. Hundreds of shows across Europe, the USA, Russia, and Japan. Encounters and friendships with people and bands, adventures and events in squats, bars and clubs. Enough answers? Things quietened down in 2010, a lengthy break with just the odd show here and there. But last year, 2021, we had to concede that Robocop Kraus really are the love of our lives: a concert request was spontaneously accepted -- surprising even the promoter, not to mention ourselves. Back to the rehearsal room. Now we are six and we have more instruments too. We had to listen back to the old songs so we could practice, and as we rummaged through the archives we happened upon the 28 songs now gathered here together for you. They range from our very first recordings to songs for (and in) 2022. EPs, compilation tracks, a few all-time faves like 'Poor Soul Relax' and previously unreleased songs or alternative versions..."

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Pete Astor on Time on Earth: "In my 50s I realized that the past slowly becomes a bigger country than the future. As always, the future is where I'm headed, but now the past and all that comes with it is stacked up behind me . . . I've made 11 albums of new material since 1987. I realize that anything I've ever thought that mattered, that told the real story, is in those records. It's been five years since my last album of new songs. Perhaps more than before, there's been plenty of time over the last few years to think and reflect. Like every set of work, Time on Earth is an attempt to make sense of life by making work about it. As erstwhile editor of the NME and Q, journalist Danny Kelly wrote recently while interviewing The Loft: 'a lifetime of listening to them has led me to believe that Pete Astor's songs would have always found a way to reach an audience. If he'd been a Californian baby boomer, he's have ended up in the Capitol Records building in Los Angeles, laying down late-night grooves with the Wrecking Crew for a largely-neglected, slightly gloomy, pop album that'd now be worth a fortune. If he'd been born into post-War Britain, earnest girls in sweaters would've fallen in love with him, and his songs, in Embassy-fogged folk clubs.' Of course, I love this quote. And I believe that Time on Earth is most of these things. But then I would say that, wouldn't I? Time on Earth has songs which were written in direct response to loss and bereavement ('Undertaker', 'Fine and Dandy'); songs striving for different kinds of belief ('New Religion', 'Time on Earth', 'Miracle on the High Street'); stories from either end of the cycles of life ('Sixth Form Rock Boys', 'English Weather'). And a few still searching for fulfilment of the heart ('Stay Lonely', 'Grey Garden', 'Soft Switch'). I was lucky enough to be able to make the music with the help of multi-instrumentalist Ian Button (Wreckless Eric, Death in Vegas, Papernut Cambridge) on the drums, bass maestro Andy Lewis (Spearmint, Paul Weller, and DJ at London's legendary Blow Up Club and Soho Radio), longtime guitarist Neil Scott (Everything But the Girl, Denim) and last but by no means least, Sean Read (Dexys, Edwyn Collins, Rockingbirds) who recorded and produced the album at his Famous Times Studios. As you would expect, I'm convinced it's the best record I've made." Pete Astor is a musician, writer and educator. He led Creation Records' groups The Loft and The Weather Prophets. He has gone on to a lengthy solo career since then.

$35.00 IN STOCK

Double LP version. 20 years of Tapete Records -- The label's first release, if memory serves, was in 2002. The world has changed a lot in the last 20 years but one detail has remained the same: Tapete Records is still putting out great music. That's a bit reassuring, isn't it? So, the label thought in their Tapete Building at Stahltwiete 10 in Hamburg-Altona: Let's look back and start a series of good, old-fashioned, fantastic label compilations in the style of Shadow Factory, Tamla Motown Is Hot! Hot! Hot! or Wanna Buy A Bridge?... something like that. And so here is Intact and Smiling: The Weird & Wonderful World of Tapete Records Vol. 1. It wasn't that easy to choose 28 out of about 5000 released songs, but what's easy? Therefore, a series. Intact and Smiling Vol. 1 concentrates on the poppy side of Tapete Records, the basic tone is upbeat and uplifting. Can't hurt these days. The title comes from the John Howard & The Night Mail song which says: "Intact and smiling, an independent soul, nobody's slave." What could be more fitting? The label would like to thank all the great artists who have released music with them over the last two decades, especially the bands and artists who have so kindly and unbureaucratically made available their great songs for this compilation. Features We Are Muffy, Martin Carr, Jaguwar, Stereo Total, Simon Love, The Jazz Butcher, The Proper Ornaments, The Monochrome Set, Botschaft, Comet Gain, Pete Astor, The Clientele, Louis Philippe & The Night Mail, Bill Pitchard, Benjamin Dean Wilson, Robert Foster, Elva, Lloyd Cole, Die Höchste Eisenbahn, Gary Olson, The Catenary Wires, Friedrich Sunlight, Sophisticated Boom Boom, LAKE, Davey Woodward and the Winter Orphans, Der Englische Garten, Carambolage, John Howard & The Night Mail.

$16.50 NOT IN STOCK

Louis Philippe is living the big dream: He's a famous football journalist and a pop star. He writes, arranges, sings, and plays the most elegant pop songs on our side of the Atlantic, he released on the legendary label él Records and his influence on the great Japanese Shibuya sound cannot be underestimated. Tapete Records present a long overdue compilation of some of the greatest Louis Philippe songs from the years 1994-2007. Many of these songs are from albums that have been out of print for a long time, and some of them are being released on vinyl for the first time. The album was expertly compiled by Louis Philippe's friend and sometime musical partner Sean O'Hagan (The High Llamas), who also wrote the liner notes. In them O'Hagan writes and recommends: "Lose yourself in this record and let me warn you. You´ll be humming the tunes and reliving the chorus's and key changes for an age, and if you´re a songwriter you will probably be lifting the melodies without realizing is. That´s the sign of a timeless classic." They say that when Smokey Robinson sings, you hear violins. And when the great Louis Philippe sings, the sun rises, even on 21 December at midnight.

"I first encountered Louis Philippe as a collaborator with The King Of Luxembourg on Cherry Red, the label that was redefining the notion of 'the alternative', resolutely showcasing European eccentricity and melody in the sea of early '80s DIY pop. I was confused and excited all at the same time and recruited to follow the career of this strange fellow. I remember catching a glimpse of him in the buzzing corridors of Cherry Red one afternoon as someone whispered 'That's him, that's Louis Philippe.' . . . As songwriters, we all assimilate our influences and Louis Philippe was learning from the special school of Bones Howe, John Phillips, Maurice Ravel, Paul Williams, Brian Wilson, Michel Legrand, Judee Sill, and Boris Vian, The Tamba Trio... the pattern here was that of an artist who was building a practice based on the pursuit of the exotic soul of harmony and arrangement. This music also extended a European perspective on a pop culture content to accept the Anglo/US axis of influence as a given. But Louis was in love with London and wrote love letters to his new home in song. Alas, some things can never last. Louis Philippe's relationship with Tokyo was also remarkable and important in establishing the Shibuya Sound, a triangular relationship between London, Tokyo, and Paris which also swept up Philippe's collaborators like Bertrand Burgalet and Simon Fisher Turner. And so to be a bit more specific . . . This record is the retrospective of a songwriter, arranger and singer who understands the gift of the chord change, the endless intrigue of arrangement and always knows where and when the sun rises and falls." --Sean O'Hagan

$16.50 IN STOCK

Unhappybirthday from Hamburg have been releasing dreamy avant-pop records and touring Europe consistently for over ten years now. The group was founded in the port city of Wismar in northern Germany in 2012 by singer and keyboardist Daniel Jahn and guitarist Tobias Rutkowski and producer Jonas Meyer joins the band for this, their fifth album. Stella Loops circles around the vast cosmos offering refuge from the feeling of confinement that has enveloped us all over the last few years and to help achieve this Unhappybirthday have mixed their trademark elements of electronica, house, and ambient music and for this release invited a guest list that includes Andreas Dorau, Martha Rose, and Jimi Tenor to contribute.

"Hamburg's masters of emotional pop Unhappybirthday return via Tapete this fall with their fifth LP, Stella Loops, a fantastic voyage through outer and inner space in a craft comprised of mid-90s electronica, pastoral house and sun-blushed downbeat. On their previous LP, the moonlit Mondchateau (TR 469CD/LP, 2020), Unhappybirthday explored the suave sophisti-pop of the late '80s, serving their trademark beauty and sadness with a poolside spritz. For Stella Loops, the Hamburg outfit swap the Mediterranean for the Sea of Tranquility, slipping their terrestrial moorings in the name of auditory escapism. Written in part as a response to the enforced inertia of the pandemic and ever-present anxiety of life in the now, Stella Loops finds the group staring skywards, seeking solace in the possibilities of the infinite. Using the sci-fi literature of the GDR as a lyrical launchpad, Unhappybirthday stumble, tumble, float and fall through the galaxy, finding freedom in each mantra like vocal. With space as their place, the group take inspiration from the dreamy electronica of their teenage daze, filtering their yearning melodies and intricate arrangements through core memories of Ultramarine, Gus Gus, and The Beloved. Processed beats and blinking sequences underpin nonchalant basslines and graceful guitar licks while nebulous pads provide a woozy weightlessness befitting their cosmic concerns. Recorded once again in Hamburg and Berlin, Stella Loops sees Daniel Jahn and Tobias Rutkowski working closer than ever with regular collaborator Jonas Meyer, who joined the group in addition to his usual production duties. Hamburg's Andreas Dorau and Zwanie Jonson return to lend their vocal talents alongside Berlin based Martha Rose, while Finnish legend and Bureau B sibling Jimi Tenor graces album closer 'Jimmy' with an enchanting flute solo..." --Patrick Ryder

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Unhappybirthday from Hamburg have been releasing dreamy avant-pop records and touring Europe consistently for over ten years now. The group was founded in the port city of Wismar in northern Germany in 2012 by singer and keyboardist Daniel Jahn and guitarist Tobias Rutkowski and producer Jonas Meyer joins the band for this, their fifth album. Stella Loops circles around the vast cosmos offering refuge from the feeling of confinement that has enveloped us all over the last few years and to help achieve this Unhappybirthday have mixed their trademark elements of electronica, house, and ambient music and for this release invited a guest list that includes Andreas Dorau, Martha Rose, and Jimi Tenor to contribute.

"Hamburg's masters of emotional pop Unhappybirthday return via Tapete this fall with their fifth LP, Stella Loops, a fantastic voyage through outer and inner space in a craft comprised of mid-90s electronica, pastoral house and sun-blushed downbeat. On their previous LP, the moonlit Mondchateau (TR 469CD/LP, 2020), Unhappybirthday explored the suave sophisti-pop of the late '80s, serving their trademark beauty and sadness with a poolside spritz. For Stella Loops, the Hamburg outfit swap the Mediterranean for the Sea of Tranquility, slipping their terrestrial moorings in the name of auditory escapism. Written in part as a response to the enforced inertia of the pandemic and ever-present anxiety of life in the now, Stella Loops finds the group staring skywards, seeking solace in the possibilities of the infinite. Using the sci-fi literature of the GDR as a lyrical launchpad, Unhappybirthday stumble, tumble, float and fall through the galaxy, finding freedom in each mantra like vocal. With space as their place, the group take inspiration from the dreamy electronica of their teenage daze, filtering their yearning melodies and intricate arrangements through core memories of Ultramarine, Gus Gus, and The Beloved. Processed beats and blinking sequences underpin nonchalant basslines and graceful guitar licks while nebulous pads provide a woozy weightlessness befitting their cosmic concerns. Recorded once again in Hamburg and Berlin, Stella Loops sees Daniel Jahn and Tobias Rutkowski working closer than ever with regular collaborator Jonas Meyer, who joined the group in addition to his usual production duties. Hamburg's Andreas Dorau and Zwanie Jonson return to lend their vocal talents alongside Berlin based Martha Rose, while Finnish legend and Bureau B sibling Jimi Tenor graces album closer 'Jimmy' with an enchanting flute solo..." --Patrick Ryder

$20.00 IN STOCK

20 years of Tapete Records -- The label's first release, if memory serves, was in 2002. The world has changed a lot in the last 20 years but one detail has remained the same: Tapete Records is still putting out great music. That's a bit reassuring, isn't it? So, the label thought in their Tapete Building at Stahltwiete 10 in Hamburg-Altona: Let's look back and start a series of good, old-fashioned, fantastic label compilations in the style of Shadow Factory, Tamla Motown Is Hot! Hot! Hot! or Wanna Buy A Bridge?... something like that. And so here is Intact and Smiling: The Weird & Wonderful World of Tapete Records Vol. 1. It wasn't that easy to choose 28 out of about 5000 released songs, but what's easy? Therefore, a series. Intact and Smiling Vol. 1 concentrates on the poppy side of Tapete Records, the basic tone is upbeat and uplifting. Can't hurt these days. The title comes from the John Howard & The Night Mail song which says: "Intact and smiling, an independent soul, nobody's slave." What could be more fitting? The label would like to thank all the great artists who have released music with them over the last two decades, especially the bands and artists who have so kindly and unbureaucratically made available their great songs for this compilation. Features We Are Muffy, Martin Carr, Jaguwar, Stereo Total, Simon Love, The Jazz Butcher, The Proper Ornaments, The Monochrome Set, Botschaft, Comet Gain, Pete Astor, The Clientele, Louis Philippe & The Night Mail, Bill Pitchard, Benjamin Dean Wilson, Robert Foster, Elva, Lloyd Cole, Die Höchste Eisenbahn, Gary Olson, The Catenary Wires, Friedrich Sunlight, Sophisticated Boom Boom, LAKE, Davey Woodward and the Winter Orphans, Der Englische Garten, Carambolage, John Howard & The Night Mail.

$35.00 NOT IN STOCK

Sold out, r2023 epress forthcoming.... Double LP version. Since the historiography of punk is a male-dominated one, a Revenge of the She-Punks was long overdue. This feminist reckoning was written by none other than post-punk pioneer Vivien Goldman, who has an insider's perspective due to her work as a musician and one of Britain's first female music writers. Along four themes -- Identity, Money, Love and Protest -- the "punk professor" traces empowering moments that punk holds especially for women. This compilation is inspired by the book, originally released by University of Texas Press in 2019. Compiled and with liner notes by Vivien Goldman.

"We're not talking a mean-spirited gotcha! revenge here. As both my book that inspired it and this recording prove, us She-Punks' revenge is about our complex survival in an all too often hostile environment. The book offers a template to finding a way through the patriarchal labyrinth of the music industry by telling the backstories of thirty-eight songs by women from not only the Anglophone countries, but Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and Eastern and Continental Europe. Together, they demonstrate how girls around the world, with no or few role models, found ways to thwart blockages and become self-expressive musicians, breaking traditions and expectations, setting new standards with every chord . . . We open with Identity featuring Fea, Big Joanie, The Raincoats, Blondie, and Poly Styrene with X-Ray Spex. Then comes Money with Patti Smith, Shonen Knife, Malaria! and the Slits; followed by Love/Unlove: Crass, Cherry Vanilla, Grace Jones, Rhoda Dakar with the Special AKA, Alice Bag (The Bags), Tribe 8 and the Au Pairs, the Mo-Dettes, Neneh Cherry from the UK/Sweden/US and this writer/musician. The closing chapter, Protest, features Sleater-Kinney, Jayne Cortez and the Firespitters, Skinny Girl Diet, Vi Subversa and the Poison Girls, the Czech Republic's Zuby Nehty, Colombia's Fertil Miseria, and Jamaica's Tanya Stephens. Many people have questioned how I arrived at those four themes (answer: thinking,) and so far, no-one has disagreed. However, in sequencing this compilation, the important thing was to sonically flow through the breadth of our creativity, led by the rhythms and sound, rather than the lyrics; they, I already knew, formed a compelling whole, an implacable critique. My perspective on punk is based on spirit rather than adherence to the venerated concept of the genre as only a frenetic full-frontal sonic attack (though that is also represented here). Having been involved with the movement at the start in mid-1970s London, as Features Editor of the punk rock weekly, Sounds, I understood it to be a front line, inclusionary genre, with DIY at its core, which is why it was the first genre to give anything approaching an equal platform to women musicians. Especially for the less conventional, all too often the path for women artists is still steeper than that of male peers. Despite the massive success of today's female superstars, there remains a quota perception in an industry that still largely lives in boystown (though always factor in that it's not the men, it's the mentality,) who are less receptive to forceful females; like the sort of bookers who say, 'Well, we've done our bit, we've booked our female artist' -- as if booking women were some grim post-MeToo duty. But as heard in these tracks, in all its forms, whether sounding strident or soft, punk is a music of resistance; women's punk specially so..." Also features Bush Tetras and The Selecter.

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Louis Philippe is living the big dream: He's a famous football journalist and a pop star. He writes, arranges, sings, and plays the most elegant pop songs on our side of the Atlantic, he released on the legendary label él Records and his influence on the great Japanese Shibuya sound cannot be underestimated. Tapete Records present a long overdue compilation of some of the greatest Louis Philippe songs from the years 1994-2007. Many of these songs are from albums that have been out of print for a long time, and some of them are being released on vinyl for the first time. The album was expertly compiled by Louis Philippe's friend and sometime musical partner Sean O'Hagan (The High Llamas), who also wrote the liner notes. In them O'Hagan writes and recommends: "Lose yourself in this record and let me warn you. You´ll be humming the tunes and reliving the chorus's and key changes for an age, and if you´re a songwriter you will probably be lifting the melodies without realizing is. That´s the sign of a timeless classic." They say that when Smokey Robinson sings, you hear violins. And when the great Louis Philippe sings, the sun rises, even on 21 December at midnight.

"I first encountered Louis Philippe as a collaborator with The King Of Luxembourg on Cherry Red, the label that was redefining the notion of 'the alternative', resolutely showcasing European eccentricity and melody in the sea of early '80s DIY pop. I was confused and excited all at the same time and recruited to follow the career of this strange fellow. I remember catching a glimpse of him in the buzzing corridors of Cherry Red one afternoon as someone whispered 'That's him, that's Louis Philippe.' . . . As songwriters, we all assimilate our influences and Louis Philippe was learning from the special school of Bones Howe, John Phillips, Maurice Ravel, Paul Williams, Brian Wilson, Michel Legrand, Judee Sill, and Boris Vian, The Tamba Trio... the pattern here was that of an artist who was building a practice based on the pursuit of the exotic soul of harmony and arrangement. This music also extended a European perspective on a pop culture content to accept the Anglo/US axis of influence as a given. But Louis was in love with London and wrote love letters to his new home in song. Alas, some things can never last. Louis Philippe's relationship with Tokyo was also remarkable and important in establishing the Shibuya Sound, a triangular relationship between London, Tokyo, and Paris which also swept up Philippe's collaborators like Bertrand Burgalet and Simon Fisher Turner. And so to be a bit more specific . . . This record is the retrospective of a songwriter, arranger and singer who understands the gift of the chord change, the endless intrigue of arrangement and always knows where and when the sun rises and falls." --Sean O'Hagan

$16.50 IN STOCK

Pete Astor on Time on Earth: "In my 50s I realized that the past slowly becomes a bigger country than the future. As always, the future is where I'm headed, but now the past and all that comes with it is stacked up behind me . . . I've made 11 albums of new material since 1987. I realize that anything I've ever thought that mattered, that told the real story, is in those records. It's been five years since my last album of new songs. Perhaps more than before, there's been plenty of time over the last few years to think and reflect. Like every set of work, Time on Earth is an attempt to make sense of life by making work about it. As erstwhile editor of the NME and Q, journalist Danny Kelly wrote recently while interviewing The Loft: 'a lifetime of listening to them has led me to believe that Pete Astor's songs would have always found a way to reach an audience. If he'd been a Californian baby boomer, he's have ended up in the Capitol Records building in Los Angeles, laying down late-night grooves with the Wrecking Crew for a largely-neglected, slightly gloomy, pop album that'd now be worth a fortune. If he'd been born into post-War Britain, earnest girls in sweaters would've fallen in love with him, and his songs, in Embassy-fogged folk clubs.' Of course, I love this quote. And I believe that Time on Earth is most of these things. But then I would say that, wouldn't I? Time on Earth has songs which were written in direct response to loss and bereavement ('Undertaker', 'Fine and Dandy'); songs striving for different kinds of belief ('New Religion', 'Time on Earth', 'Miracle on the High Street'); stories from either end of the cycles of life ('Sixth Form Rock Boys', 'English Weather'). And a few still searching for fulfilment of the heart ('Stay Lonely', 'Grey Garden', 'Soft Switch'). I was lucky enough to be able to make the music with the help of multi-instrumentalist Ian Button (Wreckless Eric, Death in Vegas, Papernut Cambridge) on the drums, bass maestro Andy Lewis (Spearmint, Paul Weller, and DJ at London's legendary Blow Up Club and Soho Radio), longtime guitarist Neil Scott (Everything But the Girl, Denim) and last but by no means least, Sean Read (Dexys, Edwyn Collins, Rockingbirds) who recorded and produced the album at his Famous Times Studios. As you would expect, I'm convinced it's the best record I've made." Pete Astor is a musician, writer and educator. He led Creation Records' groups The Loft and The Weather Prophets. He has gone on to a lengthy solo career since then.

$20.00 IN STOCK

Since the historiography of punk is a male-dominated one, a Revenge of the She-Punks was long overdue. This feminist reckoning was written by none other than post-punk pioneer Vivien Goldman, who has an insider's perspective due to her work as a musician and one of Britain's first female music writers. Along four themes -- Identity, Money, Love and Protest -- the "punk professor" traces empowering moments that punk holds especially for women. This compilation is inspired by the book, originally released by University of Texas Press in 2019. Compiled and with liner notes by Vivien Goldman.

"We're not talking a mean-spirited gotcha! revenge here. As both my book that inspired it and this recording prove, us She-Punks' revenge is about our complex survival in an all too often hostile environment. The book offers a template to finding a way through the patriarchal labyrinth of the music industry by telling the backstories of thirty-eight songs by women from not only the Anglophone countries, but Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and Eastern and Continental Europe. Together, they demonstrate how girls around the world, with no or few role models, found ways to thwart blockages and become self-expressive musicians, breaking traditions and expectations, setting new standards with every chord . . . We open with Identity featuring Fea, Big Joanie, The Raincoats, Blondie, and Poly Styrene with X-Ray Spex. Then comes Money with Patti Smith, Shonen Knife, Malaria! and the Slits; followed by Love/Unlove: Crass, Cherry Vanilla, Grace Jones, Rhoda Dakar with the Special AKA, Alice Bag (The Bags), Tribe 8 and the Au Pairs, the Mo-Dettes, Neneh Cherry from the UK/Sweden/US and this writer/musician. The closing chapter, Protest, features Sleater-Kinney, Jayne Cortez and the Firespitters, Skinny Girl Diet, Vi Subversa and the Poison Girls, the Czech Republic's Zuby Nehty, Colombia's Fertil Miseria, and Jamaica's Tanya Stephens. Many people have questioned how I arrived at those four themes (answer: thinking,) and so far, no-one has disagreed. However, in sequencing this compilation, the important thing was to sonically flow through the breadth of our creativity, led by the rhythms and sound, rather than the lyrics; they, I already knew, formed a compelling whole, an implacable critique. My perspective on punk is based on spirit rather than adherence to the venerated concept of the genre as only a frenetic full-frontal sonic attack (though that is also represented here). Having been involved with the movement at the start in mid-1970s London, as Features Editor of the punk rock weekly, Sounds, I understood it to be a front line, inclusionary genre, with DIY at its core, which is why it was the first genre to give anything approaching an equal platform to women musicians. Especially for the less conventional, all too often the path for women artists is still steeper than that of male peers. Despite the massive success of today's female superstars, there remains a quota perception in an industry that still largely lives in boystown (though always factor in that it's not the men, it's the mentality,) who are less receptive to forceful females; like the sort of bookers who say, 'Well, we've done our bit, we've booked our female artist' -- as if booking women were some grim post-MeToo duty. But as heard in these tracks, in all its forms, whether sounding strident or soft, punk is a music of resistance; women's punk specially so..." Also features Bush Tetras and The Selecter.

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Tapete Records present a reissue of Andreas Dorau's Ich bin der Eine von uns Beiden, originally released in 2005 on Mute. Includes such classics as "Kein Liebeslied", "40 Frauen", and "Im September". "Ihr brüllt von Liebe in engen Gewändern / Doch einer wie ich will die Welt noch verändern", sings Andreas Dorau on "Kein Liebeslied", written with Sven Regener. Love was not his chosen subject, he wanted to sing of other things -- wild boar ("Schwarze Furchen"), processions ("40 Frauen"), and the back house where the people come out the front ("Hinterhaus"). It was ever so. The maestro spent eight long years working on his so-called "wild boar record", a disc which featured Wolfgang Müller, Justus Köhncke, Carsten "Erobique" Meyer, and Paul Kominek, along with Andreas and Dorau. The concept of the album revolved around the separation of these last two participants. An interesting idea on paper --tender songs written by Andreas the artist, heavy bass drummed out by Dorau the party animal. "IbdEvuB" was conceived as an extraordinary album of severance. Fine on paper, yes, but in practice? ... Well, it took eight years, didn't it? Eight years of nerve-shredding fiddling around, but ultimately well worth the effort. House, soft rock, disco, glam pop, blended into a dazzling whole of Andreas and Dorau. Some of it recorded and produced in the garage, the rest in the legendary Can Studio in Weilerswist. Did Andreas and Dorau change the world with Ich bin der Eine von uns Beiden? Probably not, but they did manage to create a magnificent, timeless, electronic pop album which merits rediscovery. That's something! Remastered.

$17.50 IN STOCK

The author Max Goldt is well known to the general public. Not so the musician Max Goldt, who came across the guitarist and songwriter Gerd Pasemann through a classified ad in 1978. Their joint collaboration in the 1980s resulted in the musically contrasting project Foyer des Arts: "Melancholic, sometimes resigned tracks alternated as a matter of course with comic and surreal ones," wrote Max Goldt in the booklet to his CD box set Draußen die herrliche Sonne. In 1986, after a two-year delay, Foyer des Arts released their sophomore album Die Unfähigkeit zu Frühstücken. BBC Radio DJ John Peel liked Foyer des Arts so much that he not only played all the songs from the album Die Unfähigkeit zu Frühstücken several times on his show. Gerd Pasemann and Max Goldt were ultimately invited to record a (John) Peel Session, a rare and distinguished honor for a German-speaking band. The Berlin duo made their way to London in October 1986, where they were joined by three members of The Higsons, an energetic combo with plenty of experience as session musicians. Indeed, they only needed one rehearsal to learn the four songs that Foyer des Arts brought with them, two from the aforementioned album and two brand new tunes: "Könnten Bienen Fliegen" and "Frauen In Frieden Und Freiheit". Recording took place the following afternoon in the legendary Maida Vale Studio 4, the regular home for the Peel Sessions. "The musicians were excellent and the atmosphere was really relaxed," Max Goldt recalls, "and afterwards we met John Peel in his favorite pub, The Vine Bar." In the year 2000 Goldt asked the BBC what had happened to the session tapes, only to learn that they had probably been wiped. This was not a huge surprise, as the BBC archives were notoriously unreliable. Entire Dusty Springfield shows disappeared, apparently deleted. Twenty years later, the Cologne-based sound engineer Tom Morgenstern, with the help of a colleague from the BBC, managed to unearth the lost tapes. And here they are, 35 years on, as fresh as the day they were made.

$16.50 IN STOCK

Tapete Records present a reissue of Andreas Dorau's Ich bin der Eine von uns Beiden, originally released in 2005 on Mute. Includes such classics as "Kein Liebeslied", "40 Frauen", and "Im September". "Ihr brüllt von Liebe in engen Gewändern / Doch einer wie ich will die Welt noch verändern", sings Andreas Dorau on "Kein Liebeslied", written with Sven Regener. Love was not his chosen subject, he wanted to sing of other things -- wild boar ("Schwarze Furchen"), processions ("40 Frauen"), and the back house where the people come out the front ("Hinterhaus"). It was ever so. The maestro spent eight long years working on his so-called "wild boar record", a disc which featured Wolfgang Müller, Justus Köhncke, Carsten "Erobique" Meyer, and Paul Kominek, along with Andreas and Dorau. The concept of the album revolved around the separation of these last two participants. An interesting idea on paper --tender songs written by Andreas the artist, heavy bass drummed out by Dorau the party animal. "IbdEvuB" was conceived as an extraordinary album of severance. Fine on paper, yes, but in practice? ... Well, it took eight years, didn't it? Eight years of nerve-shredding fiddling around, but ultimately well worth the effort. House, soft rock, disco, glam pop, blended into a dazzling whole of Andreas and Dorau. Some of it recorded and produced in the garage, the rest in the legendary Can Studio in Weilerswist. Did Andreas and Dorau change the world with Ich bin der Eine von uns Beiden? Probably not, but they did manage to create a magnificent, timeless, electronic pop album which merits rediscovery. That's something! Remastered.

$16.50 IN STOCK

Bart Davenport might be a multitude of things, depending on whom you ask. He's been a mod, a blues singer, and a soft rock troubadour. He's an eclectic singer songwriter with the timeless voice of a real crooner. He lives and creates music in Los Angeles. Smooth and yet curiously pointed, his work transports you to an imagined past or present filled with romantic odes and enigmatic characters. Davenport's stories are often a reflection of now, taking place in a fantasy world but conveying personal and universal truths. Returning to acoustic guitars and '60s baroque pop tones, Davenport recently tracked twelve new songs in his home studio in Los Angeles. He takes us on an exclusive tour of colorful stories, both comic and tragic. The resulting Episodes marks his eighth proper album and is scheduled for release on Tapete Records. Davenport's evocative, new material provides both an escape from and an unusual commentary on turbulent times. From digital antagonists in "Holograms" to waltzing oligarchs in "Billionaires" to an enigmatic nudist in "Naked Man", many offbeat characters populate the funny little world within Davenport's verses. His vocals are distinctively smooth at times, while at others, a slightly cheeky, more dramatic baritone takes over. His patented happy/sad sensibility remains along with the occasional jazz chord. While Episodes features Davenport on multiple instruments, he did not go it alone. Several guest musicians were crucial to the production. Drummer Graeme Gibson's casual feel graces several tracks, notably the Kinksy "It's You". The samba-tinged "Easy Listeners" has that tropical flavor Davenport's been known to dabble in, this time aided by impeccable percussionist Andres Renteria (Jose Gonzales, Rodrigo Amarante). Meanwhile, the Turkish psych-inspired "Strange Animal" showcases futuristic organ riffing by Aaron M. Olson (L.A. Takedown), who produced Davenport's previous album (Blue Motel by Bart & The Bedazzled). Other longtime bandmates, Jessica Espeleta (bass) and Wayne Faler (lead guitar), both make appearances. Perhaps the standout track of the album is its quietest; the Brit-folk-styled "Alice Arrives". Davenport's autumnal vocal and guitar are adeptly accompanied by Dina Maccabee's original string arrangement, which morphs from earnest baroque to playful modern and back again. This along with the heavier, orchestral sound of "Billionaires" adds a touch of hi-fi to an otherwise homemade album.

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Following on from his 2018 album Sincerely, S. Love x (TR 406CD/LP), Tapete Records present Simon Love's new record Love, Sex And Death Etc. The 12 songs, written between 2017 and 2019 mostly, were recorded in two batches in July and November 2020 after being rehearsed for six months with the initial plan of recording them as live as possible all together in one room. Simon says, "Apart from COVID-19 and all the death and hand-washing, it was surprisingly the easiest album I think I've ever made! We were laser focused when it came to do these songs and it shows." Swinging from love songs ("Me And You" and "I Will Always Love You Anyway") to hate songs ("The Fuck-Up" and "I Love Everybody In The Whole Wide World (Except You)") through all points in-between, the centerpiece of the album is the nigh on seven-minute long pop epic "L-O-T-H-A-R-I-O". "That song started early one morning when a photo popped up on Facebook. I couldn't sleep and seeing it reminded me that it was taken the evening I almost had a one-night stand. I then wrote out a series of tweets about what happened (a lot happened) and originally, I thought it could be a poem to put on an album sleeve Bob Dylan style, but somebody replied saying, 'It sounds like a Leonard Cohen song' so instead it became a tune. I played it solo for the first time when we toured Europe in the autumn of 2018. It gave the band a much-needed toilet/drink/fag break in the set." The non-musical influences for this record include his wife, his son ("Au Revoir My Dude" written as a guide to life of sorts), the venal Conservative government ("I Will Dance" and "You're On Your Own"), ex-girlfriends ("North Road") and his inability to pick up on signals ("Yvonne") whereas musically Simon was aiming for (but not always hitting directly) Nick Lowe, Kevin Ayers, Silver Jews, Ween, and all the Kinks between 1971 and 1975. The title Love, Sex And Death Etc comes from the fact that every song mentions or references love, sex and/or death in the lyrics. That fact makes this a concept album but even though it's a concept album, there's no through line no direct narrative, so you can listen to it however you want.