MOULD – the Bristol trio composed of vocalist/guitarist Joe Sherrin, vocalist/bassist Kane Eagle, and drummer James Luxton – have announced their self-titled debut EP. It comes out August 2 via Nice Swan Records, and the single ‘Glow’, which was produced by Harri Chambers, is out now. Check it out below.
“‘Glow’ is taken from a short story about a writer who sits under an autumnal sky and uses the weather’s imagery to write poetically,” the band explained in a statement. “The autumnal weather is sick of people doing this, becomes enraged and attacks the writer.”
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have announced their 26th album: Flight b741 drops on August 9. It’s the first release on their own (p)doom records imprint, and today, they’ve shared the lead single ‘Le Risque’. Check it out and find the album cover and tracklist.
‘Flight b74’ arrives with an accompanying from director Guy Tyzack, who commented: “We were super lucky to have been granted access to this amazing air hanger. The song was chosen because most of the Gizz guys had a singing part and I was excited for the mic to be passed around at a fun, never stopping pace. The day was super packed tight for what we wanted to get and we didn’t want to cut corners. Our crew was tight and the Gizz guys know how to put on a show. We were so tight for time that I didn’t pee all day.”
Speaking about the album, the band’s Stu Mackenzie said, “We wanted to make something that was primal, instinctual, more ‘from the gut’, just people in a room, doing what feels right. We wanted to make something fun.”
“This is our most collaborative record – the collaboration was occurring in the room, it was free, and everyone was bringing in songs and ideas,” Mackenzie added. “And we wanted to have as many lead vocalists as we could, and to pass the mic, like, ‘This is my part, my idea, I’m gonna sing it and then I’m gonna pass the mic along to you and you can do your thing’. The whole record is built around that. We ended up doing a lot of backing vocals and extra recording, everyone in a room around a couple of microphones, just to give it that feel.”
He continued: “We had broad themes for every song, and for the bigger picture of the album as a whole, but once the mic was passed it was all up to the person who was singing. These songs weren’t written in isolation – someone would write their verse, sing it for the demo, and that would inspire the next person’s part. So we were riffing off each other. Lyrically, it’s all pretty introspective – we’re having a lot of fun, but we’re often singing about some pretty heavy shit, and probably hitting on some deeper, more universal themes than usual. It’s not a sci-fi record, it’s about life and stuff.”
Flight b741 Cover Artwork:
Flight b741 Tracklist:
1. Mirage City
2. Antarctica
3. Raw Feel
4. Field Of Vision
5. Hog Calling Contest
6. Le Risque
7. Flight b741
8. Sad Pilot
9. Rats In The Sky
10. Daily Blues
Floating Points has announced a new album: Cascade will be out September 13 via Ninja Tune. It includes the previously shared tracks ‘Birth4000’ and ‘Del Oro’, and today’s announcement comes with the release of a new single, ‘Key103’. The track is named after “an underground Manchester radio station I’d listen to religiously,” Sam Shepherd explained. Its accompanying video sees the producer continuing his collaboration with Tokyo-based artist Akiko Nakayama, who also created the album artwork. Check it out below.
Cascade follows Mere Mortals, Shepherd’s first ballet score made in collaboration with the San Francisco Ballet, as well as Promises, his 2021 collaborative album with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra. “I’m just constantly chasing challenges,” he remarked. “I always want to keep things moving and go all in on things that excite me. Whether that’s working with a 100-piece orchestra on a ballet or on a laptop on my own.”
Cascade Cover Artwork:
Cascade Tracklist:
1. Vocoder (Club Mix)
2. Key103
3. Birth4000
4. Del Oro
5. Fast Forward
6. Ocotillo
7. Afflecks Palace
8. Tilt Shift
9. Ablaze
Body Meat – the musical project of Chris Taylor – has shared another track from his forthcoming debut album Starchris, which is out August 23 on Partisan Records. This one’s called ‘Electrische’, and it follows previous singles ‘North Side’, ‘High Beams’, and ‘Focus’. Check it out below.
According to a press release, Taylor wrote ‘Electrische’ as a late-night exercise in free writing and overthinking, which he likened to “driving a fast car through the hills of Switzerland at night where you can the lights of a club faintly off in the distance.”
Jon Hopkins has unveiled ‘RITUAL (palace)’, the second preview of his upcoming record. Described as “a window into the glowing melodic core of the album,” it follows the previously released ‘RITUAL (evocation)’. Check it out below.
“In 2022, I was commissioned to compose for a project called Dreamachine – a beautiful immersive experience created by a team of artists, scientists, and philosophers, which was experienced by tens of thousands of people throughout 2022 and beyond as it continues to tour,” Hpkins explained in a statement. “‘RITUAL (palace)’ is an evolution of the music I composed for that project. I am so grateful to all those involved.”
Jennifer Crook, Artistic Director of Dreamachine, added: “Dreamachine is a multidisciplinary collaboration that engages audiences in a powerful new kind of collective experience. Jon’s original composition for Dreamachine provides the essential heartbeat to this cerebral journey, designed to build inner connection. RITUAL’s evolution of his composition builds beautifully on this unique collaboration, bringing this extraordinary music to an even wider audience.”
RITUAL is slated to arrive on August 30 via Domino.
Gaming is one of the most welcoming hobbies on the planet. No matter your age or where you’re from, hundreds of titles exist to perfectly suit your tastes. The downside is that gaming can also be expensive, where even the base device can be a significant investment. Looking at the different major gaming platforms, we’ll explore the options you can use to save your wallet and get more for less.
Starting with Mobiles
Yes, we do consider mobiles strong gaming platforms. They’re also some of the easiest places to find free games, requiring little more than a search on the Apple or Google Play stores. You can even just run a quick search for the best free games on Android to get you started.
Mobiles could also be the right home for casino game fans, these games are also perfectly well-suited to desktops and laptops. In this case, look for regional services with features like NJ casino promotions to open the doors. These provide bonuses like free spins and deposit matches that can be used in games like slots, table games, and live casino titles. If your goal is more iGaming for less, it’s hard to beat this approach.
On the Consoles
Gaming on consoles is our next step, and there are a lot of free and cheap options available here too. Firstly, free games can be searched directly from the PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch online storefronts. These will tend to be multiplatform F2P games like Apex Legends, Fall Guys, and Warframe.
For not-free but still cheap options, the best choice often comes from each console’s respective subscription service. These will cost somewhere around £10-£15 a month on the cheap end, but each can feature a special selection of AAA games available for play. These titles are rotated usually monthly, so be sure to check what’s available regularly.
For PC
The big boy of gaming choice, and where the most free and cheap options can be found. Aside from the free multiplatform games you’ll see on consoles, PC users can also expect an enormous range of new and old exclusive titles up for grabs. Storefronts like Steam can help a lot here, but for a chance at completely free AAA options, we especially recommend the Epic Games Store. This store often features completely free mainstream expensive games to draw users to their platform, so you should watch it carefully.
PC players also have options in thousands of older titles that are on sale for just a few pounds, or which have been abandoned completely. If a game is no longer available for sale, it’s fair game for a legal download, just be sure you’re careful about which site you download it from.
Once you’re over the initial cost hurdle of getting into gaming, the cost of thousands of hours of entertainment can be ridiculously low. Every genre imaginable has options, it’s just a matter of looking around. Just remember your ergonomics and your back and hands will thank you for it.
Dublin six-piece Silverbacks have returned with a new song, ‘Selling Shovels’. Recorded with Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox, it marks the band’s first new music since their 2022 LP Archive Material. Check out a video for it below.
Discussing the single, vocalist Daniel O’Kelly said in a statement: “The idea for these lyrics came from a habit I have – maybe everyone does it? When reading a historical figure’s wikipedia page I often lose interest and so I jump straight to the ‘personal life’ and ‘death’ part of the page to see how they died and the circumstances they were in at the time. The lyrics flicker between mundane distractions and fairly horrific images of war. Selling Shovels is a reference to ‘selling shovels during the gold rush’.”
Aug 23-25 – Féile Na Gréine, Limerick
Oct 19 – Workman’s Club, Dublin
Oct 20 – Coughlan’s, Cork
Oct 24 – YES Basement, Manchester
Oct 25 – Sidney & Matilda, Sheffield
Oct 26 – Shacklewell Arms, London
London-based trio Our Girl have announced their second album, The Good Kind, which will be released on November 8 via Bella Union. To mark the announcement, they’ve shared the single ‘Something About Me Being a Woman’, which follows earlier cut ‘Relief’. Check it out below.
“This song felt like the perfect place to put a lot of frustration after running out of patience with someone who wasn’t treating me very well,” singer/guitarist Soph Nathan said in a statement. “I think it’s important to give people the benefit of the doubt, but in this case it went too far, and I got tired of dealing with someone else’s preconceptions, and how they think they’re entitled to treat me. A big theme of this album is making the best of things. It’s a loving record, but in this song I just wanted to let the frustration out.”
The Good Kind Cover Artwork:
The Good Kind Tracklist:
1. It’ll Be Fine
2. What You Told Me
3. Who Do You Love
4. The Good Kind
5. Something About Me Being A Woman
6. Relief
7. Unlike Anything
8. Something Exciting
9. I Don’t Mind
10. Sister
11. Absences
Public Service Broadcasting have announced a new LP, The Last Flight. The London-based group’s fifth album and first since 2021’s Bright Magic is due October 4 via their new label home, SO Recordings. Check out the new single ‘Electra’ below, and scroll down for the album cover and tracklist.
The Last Flight revolves around the final voyage of America’s pioneering female “aviatrix” Amelia Earhart, who was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In 1937, she attempted to become the first woman to complete a circumnavigational flight of the globe in a Lockheed Model 10-E Electra airplane. She crossed the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, but disappeared near Howland Island in the central Pacific Ocean; nearly one year and six months later, Earhart was officially declared dead.
“I wanted to do a woman-focused story, because most of the archive we have access to is overwhelmingly male,” the band’s J. Willgoose Esq. explained in a statement. “I was initially drawn in by Earhart’s final fight, rather than the successes that she had, but the more I read the more I became fascinated by her. Her bravery and her aeronautical achievements were extraordinary, but her philosophy and the dignity that she had… she was an outstanding person.” He went on:
The final flight is the spine of the journey: the story jumps off at different points, and examines different facets of her personality, her relationship with her husband, her attitude to flying, her attitude to existing. She gave herself, I think, less than a 50% chance of survival when she flew the Atlantic alone. To put yourself, willingly, in those situations… I think it says something about that drive at the heart of humanity.
However The Last Flight isn’t doom-laden or covered in grief. There’s adventure, freedom, the joy of being alive. The reason why she wanted to fly was to find the beauty in living – ‘to know the reason why I’m alive, and to feel that every minute.’ The flight did fail, but she was right. Of all the people we’ve written about, I have the deepest respect and admiration for her.”
Speaking about ‘Electra’, J. Willgoose Esq. said: “The song is about Amelia Earhart’s plane, the marvellously named Electra. To match the name, the vibrancy and the excitement of the aircraft, the track is full of pulsing electronics and interlocking, percussive melody lines, plus pace.”
The Last Flight was tracked in the band’s southeast London studio, with strings by the London Contemporary Orchestra recorded in one day at The Church in north London. Guests on the record include Carl Broemel of My Morning Jacket on pedal steel, Andreya Casablanca and EERA, and This Is The Kit’s Kate Stables.
The Last Flight Cover Artwork:
The Last Flight Tracklist:
1. I Was Always Dreaming
2. Towards The Dawn
3. The Fun Of It [feat. Andreya Casablanca]
4. The South Atlantic [feat. This Is The Kit]
5. Electra
6. Arabian Flight
7. Monsoons
8. A Different Kind Of Love [feat. EERA]
9. Howland
MEMORIALS – the duo of Verity Susman (Electrelane) and Matthew Simms (It Hugs Back/Wire) – have announced their debut album, Memorial Waterslides. It’s set to arrive on October 4 via Fire Records. It includes the recently released single ‘Acceptable Experience’, as well as a new song, ‘Cut Like a Diamond’. Check it out below.
“We wrote ‘Cut It Like A Diamond’ around a bass line that’s doggedly determined to stay the same throughout, with folk harmonies, shifting drum grooves and angry saxophone squalls moving relentlessly over it,” the band said in a statement. “The song is underscored by a dark sense of despair – ‘Can you hear the hum? Is there an end to loneliness?’ – and has become a highlight to play live.”
Memorial Waterslides follows two documentary soundtracks by MEMORIALS, Women Against the Bomb and Tramps!, which came out last year.
Memorial Waterslides Cover Artwork:
Memorial Waterslides Tracklist:
1. Acceptable Experience
2. Lamplighter
3. Cut It Like A Diamond
4. Name Me
5. Memorial Waterslide II
6. Book Stall
7. False Landing
8. Horse Head Pencil
9. I Have Been Alive
10. The Politics of Whatever
