the boats - Words Are Something Else
Although The Boats have graced these pages with numerous releases and side-projects over the last few years, this amazing new album for the fledgling Home Normal label feels like their most fully-realised and essential release to date. Its also, in many ways, something of a departure for Craig Tattersall and Andrew Hargreaves, enlisting the vocal talents of Chris Stewart on three of the tracks here and managing to imbue proceedings with an almost alien mixture of submerged warehouse electronics and layered vocal pop that sounds like little else that comes to mind. Opening track "I Don't Know What I'm Gonna Do..." sets the scene with a slowed down, narcotic club session in miniature, enveloping an edgy square bassline with filtered bursts of static, sleepy handclaps and blue chords before disintegrating to a finish with little warning. "Maps of Nowhere" is up next and even more surprising, extending washes of sound and a padded kickdrum with a hazy club aesthetic that can best be compared to Move D at his most inspired. But it's "Raindrops" that's by far the most remarkable track here, starting off with Stewart's decimated vocal gradually emerging into some kind of clarity before being swept into a heaving mass of beautiful chimes, white noise and tampered beats, creating a heavenly shoegaze re-fix that we've been unable to stop listening to since the cd first landed with us earlier in the week. It's a remarkable track, and indeed a beautifully realised progression from a band that have never failed to catch our attention - now operating with a melodic depth and sonic diversity that for our money surpasses anything they've recorded to date. A beautiful album that comes massively recommended - Essential Purchase.
Type
CD // £7.99
NOW: £3.95
The rare debut album from Sylvain Chauveau available on limited new issue.
12K
CD // £7.99
Immersive and melodic electroacoustic soundscapes on this great new soundtrack collaboration
Kranky
CD // £13.99
An arrestingly subtle and incremental drone album for followers of the La Monte Young...
12K
CD // £8.99
Amazing album from 12k, full of melancholy guitar-pieces and delicate arrangements. Highly Recommended!
Wireless - Live At The Arnolfini, Bristol
Touch
CD // £13.99
Deep and immersive live material from Biosphere on the Touch label.
Home Normal
MP3 Download // £5.99
FLAC Download // £6.99
Career highlight from the magnificent 'The Boats' - pure layered micropop/shoegaze/electronic bliss.
Ballads Of The Research Department
12K
MP3 Download // £5.95FLAC Download // £7.95
The Boats deliver their debut album for the 12k label...
Home Normal
MP3 Download // £6.99FLAC Download // £8.99
A career-spanning collection of previously unreleased and rare tracks from the prolific electronica group
GARETH DAVIS, JAN KLEEFSTRA & ROMKE KLEEFSTRA
Home Normal
MP3 Download // £3.95FLAC Download // £4.95
A patiently slow, minimal and atmospheric suite of six electro-acoustic songs.
Home Normal
MP3 Download // £2.95FLAC Download // £3.95
Quietly troubled and eerie stuff from Felicia Atkinson...
Home Normal
MP3 Download // £6.99FLAC Download // £8.99
Deft, detailed electronica from David Newman's Autistici project.
DAVID WENNGREN & CHRISTOPHER BISSONNETTE
The Meridians of Longitude and Parallels of Latitude
Home Normal
MP3 Download // £4.95FLAC Download // £5.95
David Wenngren (aka Library Tapes) and Christopher Bissonnette with a set of elongated, gaseous drones.
Home Normal
MP3 Download // £4.50FLAC Download // £5.50
Beautiful project from Danny Norbury, Ian Hawgood and Jason Corder, mastered by Miles (Demdike Stare).
Home Normal
MP3 Download // £6.99FLAC Download // £8.99
Gurun Gurun reworked by Part Timer, Pimmon, Orla Wren, Offthesky and more.
The Beauty Of Doubting Yourself
Home Normal
MP3 Download // £6.99FLAC Download // £8.99
An ode to emerging out of depression, articulated as bleak drones gradually turning into glacial ambience.
Home Normal
MP3 Download // £6.99FLAC Download // £8.99
Tenderly executed album of Alva Noto-like clicks and cuts interspersed with haunting drones.
Home Normal
MP3 Download // £5.99FLAC Download // £6.99
René Margraff is best known for his Pillowdiver releases on 12k and Under The Spire.
Tribes at the Temple of Silence
Home Normal
MP3 Download // £6.99FLAC Download // £8.99
One of the most engaging and complex albums to date from Brock Van Wey aka BVDub.
Home Normal
MP3 Download // £2.99FLAC Download // £3.99
Cinematic and absorbing scenescapes tempered by a pop sensibility.
Home Normal
MP3 Download // £6.99FLAC Download // £8.99
Delicate electronic pop featuring vocals from Moskitoo, Sawako and Rurakiss.
Type
CD // £7.99
NOW: £4.50
An amazing album poised between outright aural punishment and an impenetrably black chasm. Immense.
City Centre Offices
MP3 Download // £6.99FLAC Download // £8.99
Haunting vintage soundtrack stylings on the Finnish duo's long-awaited sophomore album
ERASED TAPES
MP3 Download // £3.95FLAC Download // £4.95
The most high profile Erased Tapes release yet - another sublime collection from Peter Broderick.
