BASIN ROCK - Forced Exposure

$12.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 1/24/2025

The reinterpreted traditional folk songs that make up Cold Blows The Rain are shaped by the land and the weather. Wrapped in mist and drizzle, the crawling drone of low heavy clouds on flat-top moors. The sound of the dark Calder Valley floor and sun starved hills in West Yorkshire in the North of England. A must for fans of Karen Dalton, ØXN, Shirley Collins, and Lisa O'Neill -- it's found a home on local Todmorden label Basin Rock (Jim Ghedi, Myriam Gendron, Michael Chapman, Juni Habel, Trevor Beales). Bridget Hayden is a soul who found a home among the hills of Todmorden, the oddly-named market border town in West Yorkshire. The experimental musician, who invites the ghosts in for the classic folk songs that make up her stunning new album, knows only too well about the wind and rain, fog and mist, how rare and treasured the breaks from it are. Her favorite thing to do in the valley, she says, is "to make the most of every tiny minute of sunshine." Such aspirations nearly derailed the recording of Cold Blows the Rain, her new eight-song collection released via the Todmorden- based label Basin Rock. Having hired the town's Oddfellow's Hall to record these new songs in the late summer of 2022, Hayden says the weather was so good she ended up basking in every second of it, only moving inside to begin recording when the sun was setting, working deep into the night to make up the time. The songs that make up Cold Blows the Rain are not made for the sunlight. They come, instead, wrapped in mist and coated with drizzle, those elements shaping the album as much as the voice and the instruments held within, as real but ambiguous as the ghosts that linger in the shadows. The sound of the dark valley floor. Underpinned by waves of analogue reverb, and led by Bridget's stirring and weather-beaten voice, the songs on Cold Blows the Rain drift and crawl like low heavy clouds on flat-top hills, shaped by the land. The backdrop is equally as arresting, all subtle gloom cast in shadow, a gentle but pronounced swirling of textures, crafted from harmonium and violin courtesy of The Apparitions (Sam Mcloughlin and Dan Bridgewood-Hill). 180gm heavyweight black vinyl. Includes download code.

$30.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 1/24/2025

LP version. The reinterpreted traditional folk songs that make up Cold Blows The Rain are shaped by the land and the weather. Wrapped in mist and drizzle, the crawling drone of low heavy clouds on flat-top moors. The sound of the dark Calder Valley floor and sun starved hills in West Yorkshire in the North of England. A must for fans of Karen Dalton, ØXN, Shirley Collins, and Lisa O'Neill -- it's found a home on local Todmorden label Basin Rock (Jim Ghedi, Myriam Gendron, Michael Chapman, Juni Habel, Trevor Beales). Bridget Hayden is a soul who found a home among the hills of Todmorden, the oddly-named market border town in West Yorkshire. The experimental musician, who invites the ghosts in for the classic folk songs that make up her stunning new album, knows only too well about the wind and rain, fog and mist, how rare and treasured the breaks from it are. Her favorite thing to do in the valley, she says, is "to make the most of every tiny minute of sunshine." Such aspirations nearly derailed the recording of Cold Blows the Rain, her new eight-song collection released via the Todmorden- based label Basin Rock. Having hired the town's Oddfellow's Hall to record these new songs in the late summer of 2022, Hayden says the weather was so good she ended up basking in every second of it, only moving inside to begin recording when the sun was setting, working deep into the night to make up the time. The songs that make up Cold Blows the Rain are not made for the sunlight. They come, instead, wrapped in mist and coated with drizzle, those elements shaping the album as much as the voice and the instruments held within, as real but ambiguous as the ghosts that linger in the shadows. The sound of the dark valley floor. Underpinned by waves of analogue reverb, and led by Bridget's stirring and weather-beaten voice, the songs on Cold Blows the Rain drift and crawl like low heavy clouds on flat-top hills, shaped by the land. The backdrop is equally as arresting, all subtle gloom cast in shadow, a gentle but pronounced swirling of textures, crafted from harmonium and violin courtesy of The Apparitions (Sam Mcloughlin and Dan Bridgewood-Hill). 180gm heavyweight black vinyl. Includes download code.

$18.00 IN STOCK

Posthumous collaboration between Michael Chapman and Andrew Tuttle. Release includes Michael Chapman's original recordings, unfinished and never released (Another Fish). Sleeve notes by Andru Chapman. When Michael Chapman passed away in September of 2021, at the age of 80, he did so -- as he spent much of his life -- as both a pioneer and a legend. A veteran of the British blues/folk/jazz scene, Chapman emerged in 1966 and continued working throughout his life, always pushing the boundaries of his creations while collaborating with a slew of similarly heralded musicians along the way: Bert Jansch, Mick Ronson, Elton John, Thurston Moore, Steve Gunn. It's the latter of those -- Brooklyn guitarist and songwriter Steve Gunn -- who Chapman flourished alongside in recent years, the two collaborating on 50 and True North, two of Chapman's final and finest records. It was through that friendship that Chapman's music found Andrew Tuttle, the Brisbane-based multi-instrumentalist who has toured Australia several times alongside Gunn. In the aftermath of Chapman's passing, his partner Andru discovered Tuttle's Fleeting Adventure LP, describing it as "one of the albums that kept me sane during that first brutal winter on my own." The pair met in Australia shortly after, and before Andru had even made it back home to the north of England, Tuttle had begun working on the recordings she shared with him at that time. Those recordings were part of a project Chapman was working on at the time of his death, called Another Fish -- what would have been a companion piece to his previously-released LP, simply called Fish. Though there was little intention in terms of how to finalize the project, Tuttle spent valuable time with those recordings. What materialized, eventually -- with time, care, and diligent attention -- is Another Tide, Another Fish, something both unusual and completely distinctive. Another Tide is centered around Tuttle's own work, which shaped all seven of Michael's songs and ideas into new songs of their own, and the second disc which simply incorporates the recordings that Michael left behind. What's left is indeed a hybrid: part remix album, part cover album, both a solo work and a collaboration, of sorts. Inspired by Chapman's original ideas and with new track titles directly referencing the numbered but otherwise untitled source material, Tuttle adds his own flashes of colors throughout, including editing, sampling, MIDI transposing and signal processing that twists these songs into beautiful new shapes.

$29.50 IN STOCK

LP version. Posthumous collaboration between Michael Chapman and Andrew Tuttle. Release includes Michael Chapman's original recordings, unfinished and never released (Another Fish). Sleeve notes by Andru Chapman. When Michael Chapman passed away in September of 2021, at the age of 80, he did so -- as he spent much of his life -- as both a pioneer and a legend. A veteran of the British blues/folk/jazz scene, Chapman emerged in 1966 and continued working throughout his life, always pushing the boundaries of his creations while collaborating with a slew of similarly heralded musicians along the way: Bert Jansch, Mick Ronson, Elton John, Thurston Moore, Steve Gunn. It's the latter of those -- Brooklyn guitarist and songwriter Steve Gunn -- who Chapman flourished alongside in recent years, the two collaborating on 50 and True North, two of Chapman's final and finest records. It was through that friendship that Chapman's music found Andrew Tuttle, the Brisbane-based multi-instrumentalist who has toured Australia several times alongside Gunn. In the aftermath of Chapman's passing, his partner Andru discovered Tuttle's Fleeting Adventure LP, describing it as "one of the albums that kept me sane during that first brutal winter on my own." The pair met in Australia shortly after, and before Andru had even made it back home to the north of England, Tuttle had begun working on the recordings she shared with him at that time. Those recordings were part of a project Chapman was working on at the time of his death, called Another Fish -- what would have been a companion piece to his previously-released LP, simply called Fish. Though there was little intention in terms of how to finalize the project, Tuttle spent valuable time with those recordings. What materialized, eventually -- with time, care, and diligent attention -- is Another Tide, Another Fish, something both unusual and completely distinctive. Another Tide is centered around Tuttle's own work, which shaped all seven of Michael's songs and ideas into new songs of their own, and the second disc which simply incorporates the recordings that Michael left behind. What's left is indeed a hybrid: part remix album, part cover album, both a solo work and a collaboration, of sorts. Inspired by Chapman's original ideas and with new track titles directly referencing the numbered but otherwise untitled source material, Tuttle adds his own flashes of colors throughout, including editing, sampling, MIDI transposing and signal processing that twists these songs into beautiful new shapes.

$22.50 IN STOCK

French lullabies and traditional folk songs dating as far back as the 14th century, adapted with contemporary arrangements and faint tape manipulations in Dublin, Ireland. Imagine Serge Gainsbourg, John Martyn, and Gábor Szabó squeezed on a small stage in the early hours of a smokey backstreet Parisian jazz club, slowly hypnotizing the audience into hypnagogic hallucinations. Growing up, Kevin Fowley split his time between living in France and Ireland. He listened to French lullabies sung by his mother in one room, while his father would be playing Donegal tunes on the fiddle in another. "I'm lucky to have been brought up bilingual and bicultural," he says. "What I find interesting is that I usually think in English, but if I intentionally start thinking in French, a markedly different side of my personality comes through, encouraging different thought patterns." And this is apparent on his beautiful record of French lullabies À Feu Doux, which encompasses musical elements from both worlds, as it seamlessly glides across folk, jazz, and a rich yet shimmering in between sound. Varnished and exposed is the feeling that floats through À Feu Doux like a gentle gust of wind creeping in through the open window at night. Real night time music.

$16.00 IN STOCK

Anti-counter culture loner folk from a teenage attic in the heart of rural Northern hippiedom. Today the valley town of Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire is world-renowned as something of a bohemian backwater. It wasn't like this back in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, when a disparate selection of radicals, drop-outs, heads, musicians, artists and writers started to be attracted to the Calder Valley. Over time, those seeds of radicalism and collectivism ensured Hebden Bridge evolved into a place where people could be themselves and all shades of individual oddness not only tolerated but actively encouraged. But back at the turn of the dreary 1970s it remained a monochrome world defined by its unforgiving surrounding landscapes, where the old gritstone over-dwellings were stained with soot and rain lashed down for weeks. It was here that Trevor Beales, who was born in 1953, grew up, and from where he drew musical and lyrical inspiration. The discovery of Bob Dylan, Django Reinhardt, The Byrds, and James Taylor at a young age, lead to him picking up a guitar at the age of ten, and he was soon writing his own originals and performing them at local (though often remote) folk clubs and pubs. Recorded in the attic of the family home at Ivy Bank in Charlestown on the verdant wooded slopes at the edge of Hebden Bridge between 1971 and 1974, these early recordings are collected here for the first time and mark Trevor Beales long-overdue solo debut. In these songs is a suffer-no-fools sense of realism that is defiantly Northern, yet also expresses a worldliness that belies Beales's young years, whilst also showcasing an inherent storyteller's ear for narrative. Two aspects of this music make it remarkable: Beales' natural ability showcases a sophisticated guitar-picking style that was leagues ahead of many of his (older, more recognized) contemporaries. This is music that can confidently hold its own with pioneers such as Davey Graham, Michael Chapman, Dave Evans, Bert Jansch, and Jackson C Frank, as influenced by jazz, blues and steel guitar as any of the old songbook classics from ancient Albion. Secondly, his lyrics are a far cry from either the naïve bedroom scribblings of a teenager who has barely left his upland home, nor do they fall foul of the type of lazy cliches and sub-Tolkien imagery that was still in abundance in the early 1970s. Trevor's music is grounded in reality -- his reality. Trevor Beales died suddenly and unexpectedly on March 29th 1987, aged 33. He left behind Christine and their young child Lydia. Sleeve notes by Hebden author Benjamin Myers.

$29.50 IN STOCK

LP version. Tip On sleeve. Anti-counter culture loner folk from a teenage attic in the heart of rural Northern hippiedom. Today the valley town of Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire is world-renowned as something of a bohemian backwater. It wasn't like this back in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, when a disparate selection of radicals, drop-outs, heads, musicians, artists and writers started to be attracted to the Calder Valley. Over time, those seeds of radicalism and collectivism ensured Hebden Bridge evolved into a place where people could be themselves and all shades of individual oddness not only tolerated but actively encouraged. But back at the turn of the dreary 1970s it remained a monochrome world defined by its unforgiving surrounding landscapes, where the old gritstone over-dwellings were stained with soot and rain lashed down for weeks. It was here that Trevor Beales, who was born in 1953, grew up, and from where he drew musical and lyrical inspiration. The discovery of Bob Dylan, Django Reinhardt, The Byrds, and James Taylor at a young age, lead to him picking up a guitar at the age of ten, and he was soon writing his own originals and performing them at local (though often remote) folk clubs and pubs. Recorded in the attic of the family home at Ivy Bank in Charlestown on the verdant wooded slopes at the edge of Hebden Bridge between 1971 and 1974, these early recordings are collected here for the first time and mark Trevor Beales long-overdue solo debut. In these songs is a suffer-no-fools sense of realism that is defiantly Northern, yet also expresses a worldliness that belies Beales's young years, whilst also showcasing an inherent storyteller's ear for narrative. Two aspects of this music make it remarkable: Beales' natural ability showcases a sophisticated guitar-picking style that was leagues ahead of many of his (older, more recognized) contemporaries. This is music that can confidently hold its own with pioneers such as Davey Graham, Michael Chapman, Dave Evans, Bert Jansch, and Jackson C Frank, as influenced by jazz, blues and steel guitar as any of the old songbook classics from ancient Albion. Secondly, his lyrics are a far cry from either the naïve bedroom scribblings of a teenager who has barely left his upland home, nor do they fall foul of the type of lazy cliches and sub-Tolkien imagery that was still in abundance in the early 1970s. Trevor's music is grounded in reality -- his reality. Trevor Beales died suddenly and unexpectedly on March 29th 1987, aged 33. He left behind Christine and their young child Lydia. Sleeve notes by Hebden author Benjamin Myers.

$27.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Andrew Tuttle's Fleeting Adventure is a musical adventure through a reimagined journey from the Australian ambient producer and banjo player. Golden plucks of banjo, gauzy electronics and cosmic guitar shimmer into gloriously expansive melodies that conjure peace and space, comfort and wonder. A deepening sense of life, love, health, loss, and luck shaped the outlines of Tuttle's fifth, and most collaborative album to date. Following a surprising exhilaration and exhaustion from the hitherto most innocuous of moments in mid-2020 -- a half-hour drive to collect an online order, the furthest distance he'd traveled in months; Tuttle commenced working on new musical ideas loosely based around navigating the aftermaths and interregnums of a restless era. Thinking of musician friends and peers around the world -- each confined to their own immediate surroundings -- Tuttle's generative and collaborative musical practice became a silvery through-line, connecting American innovators Steve Gunn, Chuck Johnson, Luke Schneider, and Michael A. Muller (Balmorhea), to French/Swedish violinist Aurelie Ferriere and Spanish guitarist Conrado Isasa, back to Australian friends such as Voltfruit (aka Flora Wong and Luke Cuerel) and Darren Cross (Gerling) -- among many others -- each fitting seamlessly into Tuttle's vibrant musical world. Whilst previously a feature of Tuttle's music, the exploration of space and texture found within Fleeting Adventure feels particularly vast and generous. The involvement of Chuck Johnson and Lawrence English mixing and mastering the album respectively, as with their work on Tuttle's previous and breakthrough album Alexandra (RMSG 022CD, 2020), inspired Andrew to develop songs that are as serene and patient as he's ever sounded. Stripping elements back, the idea of pulling the songs apart somewhat, was just as important as adding the work of Andrew's collaborators. The road to Fleeting Adventure has been both long and short, but it sits as a tender and perhaps even vital reflection of an era in progress, in retrospect and in anticipation. A poignant contemplation on the many bonds that make up our lives from friends and family to the myriad places we inhabit and pass through along the way. The idea that an adventure doesn't necessarily have to be a grand statement Andrew Tuttle has gathered up a number of his contemporaries and crafted something quietly spectacular, a new beginning to familiar habits.

$12.50 IN STOCK

Andrew Tuttle's Fleeting Adventure is a musical adventure through a reimagined journey from the Australian ambient producer and banjo player. Golden plucks of banjo, gauzy electronics and cosmic guitar shimmer into gloriously expansive melodies that conjure peace and space, comfort and wonder. A deepening sense of life, love, health, loss, and luck shaped the outlines of Tuttle's fifth, and most collaborative album to date. Following a surprising exhilaration and exhaustion from the hitherto most innocuous of moments in mid-2020 -- a half-hour drive to collect an online order, the furthest distance he'd traveled in months; Tuttle commenced working on new musical ideas loosely based around navigating the aftermaths and interregnums of a restless era. Thinking of musician friends and peers around the world -- each confined to their own immediate surroundings -- Tuttle's generative and collaborative musical practice became a silvery through-line, connecting American innovators Steve Gunn, Chuck Johnson, Luke Schneider, and Michael A. Muller (Balmorhea), to French/Swedish violinist Aurelie Ferriere and Spanish guitarist Conrado Isasa, back to Australian friends such as Voltfruit (aka Flora Wong and Luke Cuerel) and Darren Cross (Gerling) -- among many others -- each fitting seamlessly into Tuttle's vibrant musical world. Whilst previously a feature of Tuttle's music, the exploration of space and texture found within Fleeting Adventure feels particularly vast and generous. The involvement of Chuck Johnson and Lawrence English mixing and mastering the album respectively, as with their work on Tuttle's previous and breakthrough album Alexandra (RMSG 022CD, 2020), inspired Andrew to develop songs that are as serene and patient as he's ever sounded. Stripping elements back, the idea of pulling the songs apart somewhat, was just as important as adding the work of Andrew's collaborators. The road to Fleeting Adventure has been both long and short, but it sits as a tender and perhaps even vital reflection of an era in progress, in retrospect and in anticipation. A poignant contemplation on the many bonds that make up our lives from friends and family to the myriad places we inhabit and pass through along the way. The idea that an adventure doesn't necessarily have to be a grand statement Andrew Tuttle has gathered up a number of his contemporaries and crafted something quietly spectacular, a new beginning to familiar habits.

$16.00 IN STOCK

"Metal Bird feels blissfully unmoored from any sense of time and space, its astral Americana hymns hovering somewhere between the dirt and the stars, between a bygone golden age and our tense present, between raw intimacy and dreamlike splendor." --Pitchfork

Metal Bird gets a release on Basin Rock, the Todmorden based record label who gave a lift off to Julie Byrne, Aoife Nessa Frances, Nadia Reid and Johanna Samuels. Eve Adams offers solace within life's shadows. Un-numbing senses with anthems of surrender and tender-hearted tales that tingle with Californian folk-noir, her album Metal Bird takes flight with the turbulence and romance of Hollywood's golden age, and meditates on the mysteries of love, death, insecurity and loneliness. Like a match struck in a cobwebbed attic, Adams voice is a fiery detective, unafraid to explore the unseen; the liminal spaces between mourning and rapture, between the coldness of a corpse and the heat of cremation. Imagery of flight and the denial of gravity floats slyly through the ten songs on Metal Bird by the California-born musician and hints at the experience of being caught in purgatory, like a passenger on a plane ride from Hell to Heaven. Combining airy folk with haunting soundscapes the album takes listeners on an auditory voyage from sonorous lullabies, to dreamy ambience, skeletal jazz, 1930s torch songs and 1940s film noir. Metal Bird has a distinct, genuine tone, with orchestral arrangements, ambient hallucinations and high-fidelity vocals that are unafraid to be heard loud and clear. For those who are hopelessly enamored with a by-gone time, there is solace in these songs and sounds. Flickering back and forth between dread and hope, the unrelenting march towards a spiritual transformation and the realization that each of us are driven by our own dreams and as much as we want to hold it in our hands, often it is intangible. The sublime remains elusive, existing somewhere in the heart, and it sounds like Eve Adams knows this best. LP version comes on 180 gram vinyl; includes inner picture sleeve with Metal Bird flight instructions; includes download code.

$29.50 IN STOCK

LP version. 180 gram vinyl; includes download code. "Metal Birdfeels blissfully unmoored from any sense of time and space, its astral Americana hymns hovering somewhere between the dirt and the stars, between a bygone golden age and our tense present, between raw intimacy and dreamlike splendor." --Pitchfork

Metal Bird gets a release on Basin Rock, the Todmorden based record label who gave a lift off to Julie Byrne, Aoife Nessa Frances, Nadia Reid and Johanna Samuels. Eve Adams offers solace within life's shadows. Un-numbing senses with anthems of surrender and tender-hearted tales that tingle with Californian folk-noir, her album Metal Bird takes flight with the turbulence and romance of Hollywood's golden age, and meditates on the mysteries of love, death, insecurity and loneliness. Like a match struck in a cobwebbed attic, Adams voice is a fiery detective, unafraid to explore the unseen; the liminal spaces between mourning and rapture, between the coldness of a corpse and the heat of cremation. Imagery of flight and the denial of gravity floats slyly through the ten songs on Metal Bird by the California-born musician and hints at the experience of being caught in purgatory, like a passenger on a plane ride from Hell to Heaven. Combining airy folk with haunting soundscapes the album takes listeners on an auditory voyage from sonorous lullabies, to dreamy ambience, skeletal jazz, 1930s torch songs and 1940s film noir. Metal Bird has a distinct, genuine tone, with orchestral arrangements, ambient hallucinations and high-fidelity vocals that are unafraid to be heard loud and clear. For those who are hopelessly enamored with a by-gone time, there is solace in these songs and sounds. Flickering back and forth between dread and hope, the unrelenting march towards a spiritual transformation and the realization that each of us are driven by our own dreams and as much as we want to hold it in our hands, often it is intangible. The sublime remains elusive, existing somewhere in the heart, and it sounds like Eve Adams knows this best.

$15.50 IN STOCK

Whilst Jim Ghedi's previous idiosyncratic take on folk has often been instrumental, exploring the natural world and his relationship to it through his music as seen on 2018's A Hymn For Ancient Land. His new album, In The Furrows Of Common Place, is a deeper plunge inside himself to offer up more of his voice to accompany his profoundly unique and moving compositions. "There were things I was seeing around me and being affected by in my daily life," he says. "Socially and politically, I saw defiance but also hopelessness. I wanted to be honest with the frustration and turmoil I was experiencing." The decision to include more of Ghedi's vocals was a conscious one and driven by a need to say something. However, this isn't a brash raging political polemic. As is now customary with Ghedi's work, it is rich in nuance, history, poetry and allegory. Musically, the album is equally locked into this ongoing sense of evolution. Ghedi's intricate yet deft guitar playing still twists and flows its way through the core, weaving in and out of gliding double bass, sweeping violin, gentle percussion, and vocals that shift from tender solos to overlapping harmonies. As with much of Ghedi's work, there's a rich connection between the past and the current. Musically, he continues to sit in a singular position of sounding distinctly contemporary yet also with a touch of traditional flair. This expands itself into the lyrical terrain here too. "I've been exploring contemporary issues and in that process discovering sources that correlate with similar issues in the past," he says. "Which proves that these issues throughout history -- environmental destruction, working class poverty etc. -- are ongoing." For all the socio-political and historical backdrop to the record it is not one that feels overwhelmed by it. Much like Ghedi's work when it was largely instrumental -- and some of it still is here -- it flows and unfurls thoughtfully, with space still being utilized masterfully, creating room to pause and reflect. It's another inimitable record from an artist that truly sounds like nobody else right now.

$28.50 IN STOCK

LP version. 180 gram vinyl; includes download; picture sleeve with song notes and lyric sheet insert. Whilst Jim Ghedi's previous idiosyncratic take on folk has often been instrumental, exploring the natural world and his relationship to it through his music as seen on 2018's A Hymn For Ancient Land. His new album, In The Furrows Of Common Place, is a deeper plunge inside himself to offer up more of his voice to accompany his profoundly unique and moving compositions. "There were things I was seeing around me and being affected by in my daily life," he says. "Socially and politically, I saw defiance but also hopelessness. I wanted to be honest with the frustration and turmoil I was experiencing." The decision to include more of Ghedi's vocals was a conscious one and driven by a need to say something. However, this isn't a brash raging political polemic. As is now customary with Ghedi's work, it is rich in nuance, history, poetry and allegory. Musically, the album is equally locked into this ongoing sense of evolution. Ghedi's intricate yet deft guitar playing still twists and flows its way through the core, weaving in and out of gliding double bass, sweeping violin, gentle percussion, and vocals that shift from tender solos to overlapping harmonies. As with much of Ghedi's work, there's a rich connection between the past and the current. Musically, he continues to sit in a singular position of sounding distinctly contemporary yet also with a touch of traditional flair. This expands itself into the lyrical terrain here too. "I've been exploring contemporary issues and in that process discovering sources that correlate with similar issues in the past," he says. "Which proves that these issues throughout history -- environmental destruction, working class poverty etc. -- are ongoing." For all the socio-political and historical backdrop to the record it is not one that feels overwhelmed by it. Much like Ghedi's work when it was largely instrumental -- and some of it still is here -- it flows and unfurls thoughtfully, with space still being utilized masterfully, creating room to pause and reflect. It's another inimitable record from an artist that truly sounds like nobody else right now.

$19.50 LOW STOCK LEVEL

"I love songs that make you feel something viscerally," says Johanna Samuels, the LA-based songwriter who releases brand new EP Have A Good One on Basin Rock, and it's a sentiment that echoes right through the heart of the five stirring songs that make up her new work, Born in New York City and named after Dylan's "Visions of Johanna", Samuels subsequently moved to LA and grew up on the classic songwriters of yesteryear before finding her way to Elliott Smith and Jon Brion. Samuels then spent the best part of a decade honing her craft, carefully peeling away the layers until she found herself here; a stark, absorbing, and visceral new collection. Finding a way to balance bright, pop melodies with a drifting sense of melancholy that can't be placed, Samuels made the most of a bad year, writing the EP as a reaction to her long-term relationship falling apart. More than just skin-and-bone, the songs here are comprised of lap steel, clarinet, Juno analog synthesizers, and more; this rich instrumentation provides a swaying and elegant back-drop which helps bring Samuel's stories beautifully to life. Recorded with musical partner, the up-and-coming producer Sean O'Brien who helped engineer The National's Sleep Well Beast LP (2017), the new EP was created in his studio, which became something of a haven for Samuels and the work she was creating. As such, the five songs on Have A Good One are full of emotional and musical depth, each moment of darkness acutely balanced by a brightness that lifts these songs out of the shadows and into the hearts and minds of the listener. "Why Do I Go There?" is a bold, glowing opener, the playful piano and lush instrumentation belying the sense of heartache in Samuels beautifully lilting voice, driving the track forwards as it softly buries its way into your consciousness. Then comes the tender, country-like balladry of "Rush Of Wheels", written quickly in the dead hours of night, it presents a poignant quest for answers, aching under the weight of its emotional turmoil. Accompanying "Rush Of Wheels" is a video that Samuel's made with best friend (and Sundance Grand Jury prizewinner) Anu Valia. Basin Rock is a relatively new label based in the Lancashire/Yorkshire border town of Todmorden. They've released albums by Julie Byrne, Nadia Reid, and Jim Ghedi. Heavyweight, die cut sleeve; Includes download code.