TAPETE RECORDS - Forced Exposure

$26.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 2/13/2026

LP version. Formed in London in 1992 by singer and songwriter David Christian, Comet Gain were originally inspired by early Creation Records, Television Personalities, and mod culture, drawing from the same ideals as Dexys, The Style Council, and Vic Godard, and from the lineage of The Velvet Underground, The Byrds and the 13th Floor Elevators. In the ensuing years they have released eight albums on such esteemed labels as Wiiija, Kill Rock Stars, What's Your Rupture and Fortuna POP! that blend French New Wave with English kitchen-sink heart, Riot Grrrl with acid punk, and C86 with post-punk and Northern soul, somehow outliving their peers and in turn inspiring a younger generation of DIY musicians. Comet Gain are all things post-punk, DIY, Indie POP, international pop underground, lo fi, garagebeat and folk and rock. Boy/girl vocals, scratchy guitars, sweet noise and rough melodies, enthusiasm and pain. It's all right here. Put it on, turn it up and feel alive again. City Fallen Leaves' was first released in 2005 by Track & Field in the UK and Kill Rock Stars in the USA and is now being reissued worldwide by Tapete Records.

$16.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 2/13/2026

Formed in London in 1992 by singer and songwriter David Christian, Comet Gain were originally inspired by early Creation Records, Television Personalities, and mod culture, drawing from the same ideals as Dexys, The Style Council, and Vic Godard, and from the lineage of The Velvet Underground, The Byrds and the 13th Floor Elevators. In the ensuing years they have released eight albums on such esteemed labels as Wiiija, Kill Rock Stars, What's Your Rupture and Fortuna POP! that blend French New Wave with English kitchen-sink heart, Riot Grrrl with acid punk, and C86 with post-punk and Northern soul, somehow outliving their peers and in turn inspiring a younger generation of DIY musicians. Comet Gain are all things post-punk, DIY, Indie POP, international pop underground, lo fi, garagebeat and folk and rock. Boy/girl vocals, scratchy guitars, sweet noise and rough melodies, enthusiasm and pain. It's all right here. Put it on, turn it up and feel alive again. City Fallen Leaves' was first released in 2005 by Track & Field in the UK and Kill Rock Stars in the USA and is now being reissued worldwide by Tapete Records.

$16.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 1/30/2026

Lande Hekt has quietly become one of the UK's best underground songwriters. On her 2021 debut full-length Going To Hell and 2022's House Without a View, she explored her queer identity, sobriety, and childhood trauma through the lens of heartfelt, conversational indie-pop, which led to spots opening for the likes of Alvvays, Throwing Muses, and The Beths. Her new album Lucky Now, written and recorded with producer Matthew Simms (Wire, It Hugs Back), reflects the most mature and confident version of Lande Hekt yet. Hekt's musical touchstones -- The Wedding Present, The Sundays, The Replacements -- remain the same, but at the same time she's delved deeper into other influences. Lucky Now is indebted to 1980s twee-pop and jangle-pop like The Pastels, Tallulah Gosh and The Bats, plus more modern iterations of the sound such as Autocamper and Jeanines, in its ecstatic, soaring melodies and gorgeous, tactile guitars. The sound is fitting for Hekt's new lyrical outlook, where, though despair and anxiety rear their heads, she digs deep to find the gratitude. "I wanted to try and push for something slightly more positive, which I'm trying to do more of generally -- just to not fall apart," Hekt says. In keeping with that, opening track "Kitchen ii" is a love song about sharing simple, domestic moments with a partner, while "Rabbits" is a song about hope inspired by one summer solstice spent on Glastonbury Tor. Meanwhile, the slower, acoustic-based "Middle of the Night" is about "reeling from a realization of being properly happy for the first time in my life," Hekt says. Hekt also returns to more politically-based songwriting, after largely avoiding politics in both life and music during a disillusioned period, on "Circular" and "A Million Broken Hearts". During the process of making the album, Hekt also moved from Bristol back to her hometown of Exeter. She wrote Lucky Now's closing track, "Coming Home", about the experience of returning there after a long tour; smelling the familiar smells, spotting the familiar faces. In a lot of ways, Lucky Now is about return -- return to joy, return to places and parts of the self once left behind. Who you once were can seem unreachable, but sometimes you can build a bridge.

$26.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 1/30/2026

LP version. Lande Hekt has quietly become one of the UK's best underground songwriters. On her 2021 debut full-length Going To Hell and 2022's House Without a View, she explored her queer identity, sobriety, and childhood trauma through the lens of heartfelt, conversational indie-pop, which led to spots opening for the likes of Alvvays, Throwing Muses, and The Beths. Her new album Lucky Now, written and recorded with producer Matthew Simms (Wire, It Hugs Back), reflects the most mature and confident version of Lande Hekt yet. Hekt's musical touchstones -- The Wedding Present, The Sundays, The Replacements -- remain the same, but at the same time she's delved deeper into other influences. Lucky Now is indebted to 1980s twee-pop and jangle-pop like The Pastels, Tallulah Gosh and The Bats, plus more modern iterations of the sound such as Autocamper and Jeanines, in its ecstatic, soaring melodies and gorgeous, tactile guitars. The sound is fitting for Hekt's new lyrical outlook, where, though despair and anxiety rear their heads, she digs deep to find the gratitude. "I wanted to try and push for something slightly more positive, which I'm trying to do more of generally -- just to not fall apart," Hekt says. In keeping with that, opening track "Kitchen ii" is a love song about sharing simple, domestic moments with a partner, while "Rabbits" is a song about hope inspired by one summer solstice spent on Glastonbury Tor. Meanwhile, the slower, acoustic-based "Middle of the Night" is about "reeling from a realization of being properly happy for the first time in my life," Hekt says. Hekt also returns to more politically-based songwriting, after largely avoiding politics in both life and music during a disillusioned period, on "Circular" and "A Million Broken Hearts". During the process of making the album, Hekt also moved from Bristol back to her hometown of Exeter. She wrote Lucky Now's closing track, "Coming Home", about the experience of returning there after a long tour; smelling the familiar smells, spotting the familiar faces. In a lot of ways, Lucky Now is about return -- return to joy, return to places and parts of the self once left behind. Who you once were can seem unreachable, but sometimes you can build a bridge.

$16.50 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 1/23/2026

More than two decades after their formation, Urlaub in Polen continue to celebrate an aesthetic of transience -- an experience bounded by time, poured into the project's very name -- set against a continuous flow of new impressions and a suitcase slowly filling with memorabilia. After a longer hiatus, their 2020 album All (TR 461CD marked a return with a warped take on krautrock, a direction which their new release Objects, Beings and Parrots both follows and expands upon. In true eclectic tradition, it ventures further into diverse genre territories -- always exploratory, yet never losing its thread. Multi-instrumentalist Georg Brenner and drummer Jan Philipp Janzen blaze a trail through a dense web of references (see also the cover collage merging tile selections, retro interior suggestions, and archaeology textbook cutouts), evoking a warm feeling of being taken along for the ride -- even as the band refuses to be pinned down to any clear musical category. Take the opener, "Abacus": kicking off with a drum machine and subtle guitar flourishes, it already nods -- title included -- to the mechanical, forward-clicking motorik sound of first-generation krautrock. Then it takes a turn, morphing into a grooving jam with increasingly dense sound layers, howling guitars, and the band's signature clipped vocal phrases -- calling to mind flashes of '90s noise rock. Next up on this winding path: a washing machine -- here manifested in layers of wide synth textures, crashing drums, distorted guitars, and vocals that end in a staccato-like cough. It's a shaking, rattling trip through a cosmos of self-willed machinery and a comforting embrace of imperfection. And so the transformation continues: sometimes as wavering retrofuturism ("Fame & Fortune"), sometimes as surprisingly melodic acoustic pop -- complete with a woodland brass solo ("Jaki's Love Time") -- and always through the weaving of finely crafted rhythmic repetitions with sonic experimentation. The Objects, Beings and Parrots in this flow form vague images, points of orientation and pause: at once recognizable elements drawn from pop and art history, and yet as fleeting and abstract as the track that shares their name. You can hear the album's decelerated genesis: after a lengthy writing phase, the tracks were recorded across multiple sessions at the secluded MARS Studio in Germany's Eifel region. The result is a trippy, self-contained celebration of persistence -- of pushing forward, without excluding moments of stillness, and with the occasional glance in the rear-view mirror.

$26.00 PREORDER RELEASE DATE: 1/23/2026

LP version. More than two decades after their formation, Urlaub in Polen continue to celebrate an aesthetic of transience -- an experience bounded by time, poured into the project's very name -- set against a continuous flow of new impressions and a suitcase slowly filling with memorabilia. After a longer hiatus, their 2020 album All (TR 461CD marked a return with a warped take on krautrock, a direction which their new release Objects, Beings and Parrots both follows and expands upon. In true eclectic tradition, it ventures further into diverse genre territories -- always exploratory, yet never losing its thread. Multi-instrumentalist Georg Brenner and drummer Jan Philipp Janzen blaze a trail through a dense web of references (see also the cover collage merging tile selections, retro interior suggestions, and archaeology textbook cutouts), evoking a warm feeling of being taken along for the ride -- even as the band refuses to be pinned down to any clear musical category. Take the opener, "Abacus": kicking off with a drum machine and subtle guitar flourishes, it already nods -- title included -- to the mechanical, forward-clicking motorik sound of first-generation krautrock. Then it takes a turn, morphing into a grooving jam with increasingly dense sound layers, howling guitars, and the band's signature clipped vocal phrases -- calling to mind flashes of '90s noise rock. Next up on this winding path: a washing machine -- here manifested in layers of wide synth textures, crashing drums, distorted guitars, and vocals that end in a staccato-like cough. It's a shaking, rattling trip through a cosmos of self-willed machinery and a comforting embrace of imperfection. And so the transformation continues: sometimes as wavering retrofuturism ("Fame & Fortune"), sometimes as surprisingly melodic acoustic pop -- complete with a woodland brass solo ("Jaki's Love Time") -- and always through the weaving of finely crafted rhythmic repetitions with sonic experimentation. The Objects, Beings and Parrots in this flow form vague images, points of orientation and pause: at once recognizable elements drawn from pop and art history, and yet as fleeting and abstract as the track that shares their name. You can hear the album's decelerated genesis: after a lengthy writing phase, the tracks were recorded across multiple sessions at the secluded MARS Studio in Germany's Eifel region. The result is a trippy, self-contained celebration of persistence -- of pushing forward, without excluding moments of stillness, and with the occasional glance in the rear-view mirror.

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Following acclaimed outings About Love and Loving Again (TR 468CD, 2020) and Hold Your Love Still (TR 550CD 2023), Christian Kjellvander returns with Ex Voto/The Silent Love, a quietly devastating and profoundly intimate record that completes an unofficial trilogy exploring love in its most tender, conflicted, and spiritual forms. Originally conceived as an album of ten soft, calm country songs, Ex Voto gradually evolved into something more expansive, yet the embryo of that intention remains, pulsing gently beneath every track. The record opens with two stripped-back songs, flows into a louder, more dynamic center piece, then drifts back into stillness, mirroring the emotional journey of its creation. As with its predecessors, Ex Voto continues Christian's exploration of themes like love, religion, the natural world, and beauty, subjects he approaches with poetic precision and emotional depth. But this album goes deeper. It is more intimate, more raw. Christian was in a different place when he began writing it, and while the gravitational center of his artistry remains constant, that personal shift colors the entire record. Recorded live over a few days in an old summer house by the sea at Sweden's southern tip, the album captures the breath and quiet of a room where no headphones were needed, where vocals bleed into the space through a PA, and every creak of the floorboards became part of the sound. The specters of each voice and instrument haunt the multi-tracks like spirits lingering in a deep desert night. It's romantic and cinematic, a kind of small-town noir transposed from the Texan wilderness to the Swedish coast. At the heart of the record is Kjellvander's deep, expressive baritone and lyrical clarity, surrounded by a sparse yet richly textured palette: brush drums, bass clarinet, mournful cornet, Rhodes, synths, and the haunting counterpoint of female vocals. Producer Tobias Fröberg focused on the scale of Christian's voice and the gravity of his words, using reverb to lend a hyper-real quality to the album's mood. The sound is different to its predecessors, and so was the recording process -- just players in a room, leaning into the silence between sounds. The result is a document of presence: atmospheric, unguarded, and emotionally resonant. Ex Voto/The Silent Love is a record that inspires patience. It's not to be consumed, but sat with, like a long conversation late into the night.

$16.50 IN STOCK

"I founded this band, and I'll bury it when I feel like it," Naked Lunch mastermind, songwriter, and singer Oliver Welter once said. Obviously, he hasn't felt like it yet. So it should come as no surprise that this band -- believed by many to be long gone -- is opening a new chapter in its eventful history, twelve years after their last critically acclaimed album All Is Fever (TR 243CD, 2013), with their new record Lights (And A Slight Taste Of Death). Following lineup changes and internal reshuffles, comes this outrageous record, on which, as seems to be the case with every Naked Lunch release, everything is once again at stake. The madness, the perspective, and the journey of songwriter and singer Oliver Welter go deep with these songs, far-reaching -- not least inward -- and from there, back out into the world. The almost fateful encounter with musician and producer Wolfgang Lehmann ("the best and most talented music interpreter ever," as Welter puts it) inspired Welter to finalize the arrangements and production of the various song drafts for Lights (And A Slight Taste Of Death) in Lehmann's studio -- with Lehmann also handling the final mix. All this, of course, was done with the support of longtime companions Alex Jezdinsky (drums) and Boris Hauf (keys/sax). Lights (And A Slight Taste Of Death) is a 14-track tour de force; demanding and harsh, yet tender and embracing. It's an intimate self-examination, spanning grand ballads like the hauntingly beautiful "Come Into My Arms or Love Don't Love Him Anymore," to sweeping, sky-storming pop anthems such as "To All And Everyone I Love, We Could Be Beautiful," or "Going Underground," and even includes completely unexpected expressive outbursts -- like a free-jazz saxophone solo in the drugged-out "If This Is The Last Song You Can Hear." Lights (And A Slight Taste Of Death) thus takes its rightful place as a consistent continuation in the tightly woven, high-quality discography of Naked Lunch.

$16.50 IN STOCK

Following acclaimed outings About Love and Loving Again (TR 468CD, 2020) and Hold Your Love Still (TR 550CD 2023), Christian Kjellvander returns with Ex Voto/The Silent Love, a quietly devastating and profoundly intimate record that completes an unofficial trilogy exploring love in its most tender, conflicted, and spiritual forms. Originally conceived as an album of ten soft, calm country songs, Ex Voto gradually evolved into something more expansive, yet the embryo of that intention remains, pulsing gently beneath every track. The record opens with two stripped-back songs, flows into a louder, more dynamic center piece, then drifts back into stillness, mirroring the emotional journey of its creation. As with its predecessors, Ex Voto continues Christian's exploration of themes like love, religion, the natural world, and beauty, subjects he approaches with poetic precision and emotional depth. But this album goes deeper. It is more intimate, more raw. Christian was in a different place when he began writing it, and while the gravitational center of his artistry remains constant, that personal shift colors the entire record. Recorded live over a few days in an old summer house by the sea at Sweden's southern tip, the album captures the breath and quiet of a room where no headphones were needed, where vocals bleed into the space through a PA, and every creak of the floorboards became part of the sound. The specters of each voice and instrument haunt the multi-tracks like spirits lingering in a deep desert night. It's romantic and cinematic, a kind of small-town noir transposed from the Texan wilderness to the Swedish coast. At the heart of the record is Kjellvander's deep, expressive baritone and lyrical clarity, surrounded by a sparse yet richly textured palette: brush drums, bass clarinet, mournful cornet, Rhodes, synths, and the haunting counterpoint of female vocals. Producer Tobias Fröberg focused on the scale of Christian's voice and the gravity of his words, using reverb to lend a hyper-real quality to the album's mood. The sound is different to its predecessors, and so was the recording process -- just players in a room, leaning into the silence between sounds. The result is a document of presence: atmospheric, unguarded, and emotionally resonant. Ex Voto/The Silent Love is a record that inspires patience. It's not to be consumed, but sat with, like a long conversation late into the night.

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. In 1985, Eric Goulden released an album entitled A Roomful Of Monkeys on the Go! Discs label under the name Captains Of Industry. It was a disaster -- most people didn't like it -- where it wasn't roundly ignored it was critically slated. Forty years later he decided to use these songs, written in the Medway Towns between 1982 and '84, as the basis for a new album: England Screaming. On the new recordings Eric played most of the instruments himself. Sam Shepherd played the drums, Amy Rigby and Marc Valentine sang backing vocals, and contributed piano along with Eric's art school friend, performance artist Graham (Graham) Beck. England Screaming is a sonically savage world apart from the insipid, half-arsed (Eric's words) original album. He has succeeded in marrying a young and unrealized vision to the wisdom and experience of his older years, incidentally posing the question: how far have we actually come as a society? As Wreckless Eric he needs little introduction -- he wrote and recorded the classic "Whole Wide World" and had a hit with it back in 1977. Since then it's been a hit for countless other artists including The Monkees, Cage The Elephant, and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. As Eric Goulden it's a little more complicated -- a musician, artist, writer, recording engineer and producer, he didn't like either the music business, the mechanics of fame, or the name he'd been given to hide behind, so he crawled out of the spotlight and disappeared into the underground. He went on to release twenty something albums in forty something years under various names -- The Len Bright Combo, Le Beat Group Electrique, The Donovan Of Trash, The Hitsville House Band, and with his wife as one half of Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby, finally realizing he was stuck with the name Wreckless Eric.

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. "I founded this band, and I'll bury it when I feel like it," Naked Lunch mastermind, songwriter, and singer Oliver Welter once said. Obviously, he hasn't felt like it yet. So it should come as no surprise that this band -- believed by many to be long gone -- is opening a new chapter in its eventful history, twelve years after their last critically acclaimed album All Is Fever (TR 243CD, 2013), with their new record Lights (And A Slight Taste Of Death). Following lineup changes and internal reshuffles, comes this outrageous record, on which, as seems to be the case with every Naked Lunch release, everything is once again at stake. The madness, the perspective, and the journey of songwriter and singer Oliver Welter go deep with these songs, far-reaching -- not least inward -- and from there, back out into the world. The almost fateful encounter with musician and producer Wolfgang Lehmann ("the best and most talented music interpreter ever," as Welter puts it) inspired Welter to finalize the arrangements and production of the various song drafts for Lights (And A Slight Taste Of Death) in Lehmann's studio -- with Lehmann also handling the final mix. All this, of course, was done with the support of longtime companions Alex Jezdinsky (drums) and Boris Hauf (keys/sax). Lights (And A Slight Taste Of Death) is a 14-track tour de force; demanding and harsh, yet tender and embracing. It's an intimate self-examination, spanning grand ballads like the hauntingly beautiful "Come Into My Arms or Love Don't Love Him Anymore," to sweeping, sky-storming pop anthems such as "To All And Everyone I Love, We Could Be Beautiful," or "Going Underground," and even includes completely unexpected expressive outbursts -- like a free-jazz saxophone solo in the drugged-out "If This Is The Last Song You Can Hear." Lights (And A Slight Taste Of Death) thus takes its rightful place as a consistent continuation in the tightly woven, high-quality discography of Naked Lunch.

$16.50 IN STOCK

In 1985, Eric Goulden released an album entitled A Roomful Of Monkeys on the Go! Discs label under the name Captains Of Industry. It was a disaster -- most people didn't like it -- where it wasn't roundly ignored it was critically slated. Forty years later he decided to use these songs, written in the Medway Towns between 1982 and '84, as the basis for a new album: England Screaming. On the new recordings Eric played most of the instruments himself. Sam Shepherd played the drums, Amy Rigby and Marc Valentine sang backing vocals, and contributed piano along with Eric's art school friend, performance artist Graham (Graham) Beck. England Screaming is a sonically savage world apart from the insipid, half-arsed (Eric's words) original album. He has succeeded in marrying a young and unrealized vision to the wisdom and experience of his older years, incidentally posing the question: how far have we actually come as a society? As Wreckless Eric he needs little introduction -- he wrote and recorded the classic "Whole Wide World" and had a hit with it back in 1977. Since then it's been a hit for countless other artists including The Monkees, Cage The Elephant, and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. As Eric Goulden it's a little more complicated -- a musician, artist, writer, recording engineer and producer, he didn't like either the music business, the mechanics of fame, or the name he'd been given to hide behind, so he crawled out of the spotlight and disappeared into the underground. He went on to release twenty something albums in forty something years under various names -- The Len Bright Combo, Le Beat Group Electrique, The Donovan Of Trash, The Hitsville House Band, and with his wife as one half of Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby, finally realizing he was stuck with the name Wreckless Eric.

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Welcome to Bobby's Place, the new split personality album from long time musical mischief maker and cultural provocateur Bobby Conn! Side A finds Bobby living in a tent somewhere on the astral plane surrounded by synthesizers, woodwinds, hand drums and a pulsating psychedelic fog. Planet Earth and the temporal plane are only faintly visible in the distance. Bobby is joined by his partner in crime Monica BouBou on violin, and DJ LeDeuce on unknown electronics making three long form journeys through polyrhythmic soundscapes. Master percussionist Michael Zerang (Peter Brötzmann Tentet, among many others), virtuoso flautist Constance Volk (Ensemble Dal Niente, Twyla Tharp Dance), and bassoonist Airan Wright (Mucca Pazza) come along for the ride. While sonic exploration has always been an aspect of Bobby's music, this is his purest expression to date. Side One finds Bobby starring in an alternative reality workplace sitcom also called "Bobby's Place." In each episode Bobby starts a new small business, like a restaurant or a nail salon, with a team of puppets, but the business inevitably fails and ends in bankruptcy by the end of the show. Bobby sings odes to blind (emphasis on blind) optimism in the face of rising Fascism and the decadent decay of late capitalism, joined once again by Monica BouBou and his band from 2020's Recovery release (TR 450CD): Josh Johannpeter, Jim "Dallas" Cooper, Devin Davis, and Billie Howard. The album was recorded at Bobby's home studio in Chicago over the summer of 2024 and mixed by the brilliant Cooper Crain (Bitchin' Bajas). Bobby Conn is a vocalist, songwriter, and performance artist working in Chicago. He came out of the Chicago "No-Wave" noise and performance scene in the mid-90's but quickly developed a reputation for extravagantly excessive performances, satirically political lyrics, and experimental, electro glam art rock. He collaborates with his partner and violinist Monica BouBou, DJ and sound designer Adam "DJ LeDeuce" Greuel, longtime rhythm section Jim "Dallas" Cooper and Josh Johannpeter, as well as many talented players in the Chicago classical, jazz and improvisational scene. With Monica, he often performs as a minimalist electro duo with sequenced backing tracks, and also performs at larger events with his seven-piece Superband.

$16.50 IN STOCK

Welcome to Bobby's Place, the new split personality album from long time musical mischief maker and cultural provocateur Bobby Conn! Side A finds Bobby living in a tent somewhere on the astral plane surrounded by synthesizers, woodwinds, hand drums and a pulsating psychedelic fog. Planet Earth and the temporal plane are only faintly visible in the distance. Bobby is joined by his partner in crime Monica BouBou on violin, and DJ LeDeuce on unknown electronics making three long form journeys through polyrhythmic soundscapes. Master percussionist Michael Zerang (Peter Brötzmann Tentet, among many others), virtuoso flautist Constance Volk (Ensemble Dal Niente, Twyla Tharp Dance), and bassoonist Airan Wright (Mucca Pazza) come along for the ride. While sonic exploration has always been an aspect of Bobby's music, this is his purest expression to date. Side One finds Bobby starring in an alternative reality workplace sitcom also called "Bobby's Place." In each episode Bobby starts a new small business, like a restaurant or a nail salon, with a team of puppets, but the business inevitably fails and ends in bankruptcy by the end of the show. Bobby sings odes to blind (emphasis on blind) optimism in the face of rising Fascism and the decadent decay of late capitalism, joined once again by Monica BouBou and his band from 2020's Recovery release (TR 450CD): Josh Johannpeter, Jim "Dallas" Cooper, Devin Davis, and Billie Howard. The album was recorded at Bobby's home studio in Chicago over the summer of 2024 and mixed by the brilliant Cooper Crain (Bitchin' Bajas). Bobby Conn is a vocalist, songwriter, and performance artist working in Chicago. He came out of the Chicago "No-Wave" noise and performance scene in the mid-90's but quickly developed a reputation for extravagantly excessive performances, satirically political lyrics, and experimental, electro glam art rock. He collaborates with his partner and violinist Monica BouBou, DJ and sound designer Adam "DJ LeDeuce" Greuel, longtime rhythm section Jim "Dallas" Cooper and Josh Johannpeter, as well as many talented players in the Chicago classical, jazz and improvisational scene. With Monica, he often performs as a minimalist electro duo with sequenced backing tracks, and also performs at larger events with his seven-piece Superband.

$16.50 IN STOCK

Prolapse formed in Leicester in the early '90s and are now spread across the UK and Scandinavia. Still pursuing their own path of repetition and twisted melodies, they merge influences from post punk to krautrock and even folk. Their previous releases have included numerous singles and four albums on various labels, including Cherry Red and Radar. They feature vocalists Mick Derrick and Linda Steelyard, whose intense dueling vocals combine with ferocious triple guitar assault and pummeling rhythms. The fifth Prolapse album I Wonder When They're Going to Destroy Your Face is released on Tapete Records and marks the band's first new recordings since their last album, Ghosts of Dead Aeroplanes. From the opening incessant riff of "The Fall of Cashline," Prolapse set their stall out, hammering the message that they're back, over and over (and over and over) again. The album was mainly written in Leicester and recorded at Foel Studio in Wales. Some songs had been evolving for a few years whilst others (three on the album) were improvised and recorded on the spot, just like they've always done. Get ready, turn the microphones on, press record -- and something just happens. Perhaps channeling some of the ghosts that have previously recorded at Foel: Amon Düül II, the Groundhogs, Young Marble Giants, My Bloody Valentine, and inevitably The Fall. The last words of the album are said by Linda Steelyard, recounting a tale of arriving at Leicester Forest East Services, and deciding to stay -- forever.

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Prolapse formed in Leicester in the early '90s and are now spread across the UK and Scandinavia. Still pursuing their own path of repetition and twisted melodies, they merge influences from post punk to krautrock and even folk. Their previous releases have included numerous singles and four albums on various labels, including Cherry Red and Radar. They feature vocalists Mick Derrick and Linda Steelyard, whose intense dueling vocals combine with ferocious triple guitar assault and pummeling rhythms. The fifth Prolapse album I Wonder When They're Going to Destroy Your Face is released on Tapete Records and marks the band's first new recordings since their last album, Ghosts of Dead Aeroplanes. From the opening incessant riff of "The Fall of Cashline," Prolapse set their stall out, hammering the message that they're back, over and over (and over and over) again. The album was mainly written in Leicester and recorded at Foel Studio in Wales. Some songs had been evolving for a few years whilst others (three on the album) were improvised and recorded on the spot, just like they've always done. Get ready, turn the microphones on, press record -- and something just happens. Perhaps channeling some of the ghosts that have previously recorded at Foel: Amon Düül II, the Groundhogs, Young Marble Giants, My Bloody Valentine, and inevitably The Fall. The last words of the album are said by Linda Steelyard, recounting a tale of arriving at Leicester Forest East Services, and deciding to stay -- forever.

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Unsent Letters is the weird cousin to songs on half a lifetime of albums. It has been living in the basement, in a box and is now emerging, blinking into the daylight. Even though it's a bit rough around the edges, it turns out to be a rather charming and likeable fellow for all that. And with stories to tell. Pete Astor is a musician, writer and educator. He led Creation Records' groups The Loft and The Weather Prophets, writing songs and releasing records that helped define the sound of the label and the emerging Indie genre. He has gone on to a lengthy solo career since then; writing, recording and releasing music on a range of labels including Matador, Heavenly, Warp, EMI and Fortuna Pop. He is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Westminster. As well as touring extensively, he also makes records with David Sheppard as Ellis Island Sound and releases his spoken word electronic pop project as The Attendant with Ian Button (Go Kart Mozart, Death in Vegas) on his label Faux Lux. Since 2017, Astor has been signed to the estimable Tapete Records, home to Robert Forster, Lloyd Cole, and Comet Gain among many excellent others. Unsent Letters features songs that Astor wrote while in The Loft but which the group never played, along with songs from throughout his forty-year career that are now, finally coming out into the world.

$16.50 IN STOCK

Unsent Letters is the weird cousin to songs on half a lifetime of albums. It has been living in the basement, in a box and is now emerging, blinking into the daylight. Even though it's a bit rough around the edges, it turns out to be a rather charming and likeable fellow for all that. And with stories to tell. Pete Astor is a musician, writer and educator. He led Creation Records' groups The Loft and The Weather Prophets, writing songs and releasing records that helped define the sound of the label and the emerging Indie genre. He has gone on to a lengthy solo career since then; writing, recording and releasing music on a range of labels including Matador, Heavenly, Warp, EMI and Fortuna Pop. He is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Westminster. As well as touring extensively, he also makes records with David Sheppard as Ellis Island Sound and releases his spoken word electronic pop project as The Attendant with Ian Button (Go Kart Mozart, Death in Vegas) on his label Faux Lux. Since 2017, Astor has been signed to the estimable Tapete Records, home to Robert Forster, Lloyd Cole, and Comet Gain among many excellent others. Unsent Letters features songs that Astor wrote while in The Loft but which the group never played, along with songs from throughout his forty-year career that are now, finally coming out into the world.

$16.50 IN STOCK

Formed in London in 1992 by singer and songwriter David Christian, Comet Gain were originally inspired by early Creation Records, Television Personalities and mod culture, drawing from the same ideals as Dexys, The Style Council and Vic Godard, and from the lineage of The Velvet Underground, The Byrds and the 13th Floor Elevators. In the ensuing years they have released eight albums on such esteemed labels as Wiiija, Kill Rock Stars, What's Your Rupture and Fortuna POP! that blend French New Wave with English kitchen-sink heart, Riot Grrrl with acid punk, and C86 with post-punk and Northern soul, somehow outliving their peers and in turn inspiring a younger generation of DIY musicians. On this record, their second album proper for Tapete Records, Comet Gain are David Christian (vocals, guitar), Ben Phillipson (guitar), Rachel Evans (vocals), Robin Christian (percussion), Anne Laure Guillain (keyboards) and Clientele bassist James Hornsey, with additional vocal, brass and keyboard contributions from producer Sean Read (Dexys, Edwyn Collins, Rockingbirds).

"After Comet Gain's last LP Fireraisers Forever! which was a necessary exorcism of the Moron Era that has in fact only got worse -- they have put aside the fuzz drenched broken glass howls for a more immediate, toe-tapping rush of melody and intent. Sifted through from the library of songs David Christian Feck had been recording over the last couple years for Bandcamp LPs of homemade snap, crackle and POP and picked the best bunch and streamlined, improved and muscled up 8 or so and wrote new songs that would fit into a living thing - a jukebox of favorites playing somewhere in the background -- evergreen sixties UK pop with tough edges, soul stompers with a slight tear in the eye, Alex Chilton, Gene Clark, 'Sound Affects' Jam, euphoric melancholic folk rock, Hitchcock and Cope, The Fall when they made pop records, snarling freakbeat, yearning '80s baroque popness and jangled mornings and sad midnights -- an alchemy mix to make something direct with hooks and hope and heart-looking back to look forward and looking forward to be in the NOW? Truly this is one of the best of the Comet Gain LPs -- a concise mix of all their bags of tricks but in a way where everything fits like close friends that finish their own sentences -- pop singles, garage snarl, midnight ballads, morning floor shakers, folkrockers, obtuse angles and direct hits. Just good things to hum for the 'Ordinary Outsiders' everywhere as they watch the world falling down around them, because sometimes that's all you can do." --Allen Ginsberg, Bordeaux, Jan 2025

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Picture one of the greatest living singer-songwriters in a kitchen. He is on holidays, he's just had a swim. His wife is out on the beach, and he finds himself faced with a bowl of irresistible strawberries. They're meant to be shared, of course, but their taste is "out of the ordinary," so he just can't help himself. Minutes later all of the delicious fruit are gone, but there's the germ of a song as the phrase "Someone ate all the strawberries" has just popped into Robert Forster's mind, sounding "so weird, but normal". Thankfully, he has taken his guitar with him. As the story goes, his wife Karin Bäumler not only forgave her husband, she actually joined him on a duet of what was to become the title song to his ninth solo album. Robert Forster has perfected the art of being outré in a least ostentatious way, from his time in the Go-Betweens to his solo career, now spanning almost three decades, interrupted only by the old band's reformation in 2000 which ended with his songwriting partner Grant McLennan's untimely death in 2006. Strawberries follows a recent spate of deluxe reissues of four of his older solo albums as well as the third and final volume of the career-spanning series of G Stands For Go-Betweens boxsets with a much awaited helping of new material. Next to admittedly bigger names such as Bob Dylan or Nick Cave, Robert Forster is the rare case of an artist with a celebrated past whose current work evokes genuine interest among a faithful fan base. As a straight-up personal song, "Strawberries" is a bit of a red herring in the context of this new album that, unusually for Forster, deals almost exclusively in observational character studies or, as the author would have it, "story songs". Louis Forster, by the way, also makes an impressive appearance on lyrical lead guitar in "Such a Shame." As his slapback echo vocals tuck into a rockabilly vibe, you can hear Forster enjoying the company of his Swedish backing band: producer Peter Morén (of Peter, Björn and John fame) on guitar, Jonas Thorell on bass, and Magnus Olsson on drums, crucially augmented by Lina Langendorf on various woodwind instruments and Anna Åhman on keys. The album's monumental closing track "Diamonds" starts off as a cross between Lou Reed and Buffalo Springfield, then takes off via Astral Weeks into an (almost) Albert Ayler direction, with Lina Langendorf given free rein on the tenor sax and Forster himself relinquishing his trademark understatement for some unexpected outbursts of falsetto.

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Formed in London in 1992 by singer and songwriter David Christian, Comet Gain were originally inspired by early Creation Records, Television Personalities and mod culture, drawing from the same ideals as Dexys, The Style Council and Vic Godard, and from the lineage of The Velvet Underground, The Byrds and the 13th Floor Elevators. In the ensuing years they have released eight albums on such esteemed labels as Wiiija, Kill Rock Stars, What's Your Rupture and Fortuna POP! that blend French New Wave with English kitchen-sink heart, Riot Grrrl with acid punk, and C86 with post-punk and Northern soul, somehow outliving their peers and in turn inspiring a younger generation of DIY musicians. On this record, their second album proper for Tapete Records, Comet Gain are David Christian (vocals, guitar), Ben Phillipson (guitar), Rachel Evans (vocals), Robin Christian (percussion), Anne Laure Guillain (keyboards) and Clientele bassist James Hornsey, with additional vocal, brass and keyboard contributions from producer Sean Read (Dexys, Edwyn Collins, Rockingbirds).

"After Comet Gain's last LP Fireraisers Forever! which was a necessary exorcism of the Moron Era that has in fact only got worse -- they have put aside the fuzz drenched broken glass howls for a more immediate, toe-tapping rush of melody and intent. Sifted through from the library of songs David Christian Feck had been recording over the last couple years for Bandcamp LPs of homemade snap, crackle and POP and picked the best bunch and streamlined, improved and muscled up 8 or so and wrote new songs that would fit into a living thing - a jukebox of favorites playing somewhere in the background -- evergreen sixties UK pop with tough edges, soul stompers with a slight tear in the eye, Alex Chilton, Gene Clark, 'Sound Affects' Jam, euphoric melancholic folk rock, Hitchcock and Cope, The Fall when they made pop records, snarling freakbeat, yearning '80s baroque popness and jangled mornings and sad midnights -- an alchemy mix to make something direct with hooks and hope and heart-looking back to look forward and looking forward to be in the NOW? Truly this is one of the best of the Comet Gain LPs -- a concise mix of all their bags of tricks but in a way where everything fits like close friends that finish their own sentences -- pop singles, garage snarl, midnight ballads, morning floor shakers, folkrockers, obtuse angles and direct hits. Just good things to hum for the 'Ordinary Outsiders' everywhere as they watch the world falling down around them, because sometimes that's all you can do." --Allen Ginsberg, Bordeaux, Jan 2025

$16.50 IN STOCK

Picture one of the greatest living singer-songwriters in a kitchen. He is on holidays, he's just had a swim. His wife is out on the beach, and he finds himself faced with a bowl of irresistible strawberries. They're meant to be shared, of course, but their taste is "out of the ordinary," so he just can't help himself. Minutes later all of the delicious fruit are gone, but there's the germ of a song as the phrase "Someone ate all the strawberries" has just popped into Robert Forster's mind, sounding "so weird, but normal". Thankfully, he has taken his guitar with him. As the story goes, his wife Karin Bäumler not only forgave her husband, she actually joined him on a duet of what was to become the title song to his ninth solo album. Robert Forster has perfected the art of being outré in a least ostentatious way, from his time in the Go-Betweens to his solo career, now spanning almost three decades, interrupted only by the old band's reformation in 2000 which ended with his songwriting partner Grant McLennan's untimely death in 2006. Strawberries follows a recent spate of deluxe reissues of four of his older solo albums as well as the third and final volume of the career-spanning series of G Stands For Go-Betweens boxsets with a much awaited helping of new material. Next to admittedly bigger names such as Bob Dylan or Nick Cave, Robert Forster is the rare case of an artist with a celebrated past whose current work evokes genuine interest among a faithful fan base. As a straight-up personal song, "Strawberries" is a bit of a red herring in the context of this new album that, unusually for Forster, deals almost exclusively in observational character studies or, as the author would have it, "story songs". Louis Forster, by the way, also makes an impressive appearance on lyrical lead guitar in "Such a Shame." As his slapback echo vocals tuck into a rockabilly vibe, you can hear Forster enjoying the company of his Swedish backing band: producer Peter Morén (of Peter, Björn and John fame) on guitar, Jonas Thorell on bass, and Magnus Olsson on drums, crucially augmented by Lina Langendorf on various woodwind instruments and Anna Åhman on keys. The album's monumental closing track "Diamonds" starts off as a cross between Lou Reed and Buffalo Springfield, then takes off via Astral Weeks into an (almost) Albert Ayler direction, with Lina Langendorf given free rein on the tenor sax and Forster himself relinquishing his trademark understatement for some unexpected outbursts of falsetto.

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. The Hanoverian post-punk group Der Moderne Man made a splash with the 1980 release of their first album 80 Tage auf See (80 Days at Sea). The album quickly drew attention throughout Germany, later also in the UK and other international territories -- not least thanks to the support of BBC's John Peel. The second LP Unmodern was released in 1982. Tapete Records is now re-issuing the first two studio albums. This is accompanied by Jugend Forscht, a compilation of demos, EPs and singles with some unreleased tracks. All three releases are complemented by detailed liner notes and previously unreleased images.

"Although Unmodern is still the album of a bunch of amateurishly posing musicians demonstrating self-empowerment, alongside the simple arrangements, statements and songs that repeatedly define POP in three capital letters, it jangles and twinkles in every nook and cranny, and not just like that, but well thought out and in the same way that New Wave was defined and produced in the UK. The topics that Unmodern tackles have aged surprisingly well. I have to put it this way because it sounds good, but you could just as well say that they are quite conservative. Or you could tone it down and say that you must understand it in the context of the times. Abwärts were afraid of the computer state, Der Moderne Man criticizes the fact that robots are now making music. With 'Nur Die', it's not entirely clear which language is being referred to. It could be German. 'Anakonda' and 'Blaue Matrosen' provoke with a proximity to the exoticism of the 1940s and 1950s: here, 'the faraway' invariably is a somewhat ridiculous world, and the songs do not clearly distinguish themselves from this part of German non-culture. All of this was justified against the backdrop of the hippie dogmatism of the 1970s, but as I said, it can often only be understood in the context of the times. In any case, Der Moderne Man achieved something here that hardly anyone else in Germany would have managed at the time, except perhaps Fehlfarben. A cutting-edge production of international standard. New Wave without caricaturing New Wave. 'Blaue Matrosen' was released around the same time as 'Enola Gay' without being left behind or anyone turning up their nose and saying something like 'Oh, the Germans are trying their hand at New Wave now too.' Hats off to that." --Frank Spilker

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Louis Philippe and The Night Mail return with a new captivating record where the songs are once again faultless. Carrying on the journey away from the classic towards the unexpected with new synths and hand claps adding a sense of the abrupt and, with voices calling from the wings, a sense of play and a lack of fear. Philippe Auclair aka Louis Philippe, Anglo-French singer-songwriter extraordinaire, has been an admired fixture for the past four decades, from his beginnings as protagonist and house producer at Mike Alway's fabled él Records label through his forays into the Shibuya sound and collaborations with the likes of Bertrand Burgalat, XTC's Dave Gregory, High Llamas' Sean O'Hagan and Young Marble Giants' Stuart Moxham right up to his more recent adventures with The Night Mail -- a loose ensemble around bassist/sometime acid jazz artist/encyclopedian of sound Andy Lewis, ex-Death in Vegas guitarist/head of heads at Papernut Cambridge/legacy indie's favorite live and session drummer Ian Button and guitarist/Viennese pop ambassador to Canterbury Robert Rotifer. When Louis Philippe & The Night Mail met again at Rimshot Studio in rural Kent in the spring of 2023 to tackle album number two, the same extended line-up was assembled. Work on The Road to the Sea began with just four days' intense recording under Rimshot's oakwood eaves followed by extensive extra sessions in Andy Lewis' hideaway studio somewhere up in deepest Bassetlaw. As the core duo of obsessives, Lewis/Philippe immersed themselves in the material, adding voices, instruments and effects, interrupted only once by Robert Rotifer visiting to throw in a few more touches of Telecaster. Their mission was to fully realize the sonic and harmonic potential of songs as varied as the partly portentous, partly (deceptively) jaunty opener "The Road to Somewhere", the catchy, XTC-flavoured "Pictures of Anna", the breezy-yet-apocalyptic space age groove of "Where Did We Go Wrong" or the piano-led Francophone waltz of "Une maison sans toit". It all adds up to a colorful mix of delicate textures, subtly sculpted reverb, melodic mellotron madness, Wilsonesque layered vocal harmonies, and the sort of long lost, very English whimsy it would take an anglophile Frenchman to evoke. And yet, in its transparent spaciousness dotted with charming detail, The Road To The Sea also brings to mind the sound of Summer Dancing, Andy Lewis' acclaimed 2017 collaboration with the late, great Judy Dyble.

$16.50 IN STOCK

Louis Philippe and The Night Mail return with a new captivating record where the songs are once again faultless. Carrying on the journey away from the classic towards the unexpected with new synths and hand claps adding a sense of the abrupt and, with voices calling from the wings, a sense of play and a lack of fear. Philippe Auclair aka Louis Philippe, Anglo-French singer-songwriter extraordinaire, has been an admired fixture for the past four decades, from his beginnings as protagonist and house producer at Mike Alway's fabled él Records label through his forays into the Shibuya sound and collaborations with the likes of Bertrand Burgalat, XTC's Dave Gregory, High Llamas' Sean O'Hagan and Young Marble Giants' Stuart Moxham right up to his more recent adventures with The Night Mail -- a loose ensemble around bassist/sometime acid jazz artist/encyclopedian of sound Andy Lewis, ex-Death in Vegas guitarist/head of heads at Papernut Cambridge/legacy indie's favorite live and session drummer Ian Button and guitarist/Viennese pop ambassador to Canterbury Robert Rotifer. When Louis Philippe & The Night Mail met again at Rimshot Studio in rural Kent in the spring of 2023 to tackle album number two, the same extended line-up was assembled. Work on The Road to the Sea began with just four days' intense recording under Rimshot's oakwood eaves followed by extensive extra sessions in Andy Lewis' hideaway studio somewhere up in deepest Bassetlaw. As the core duo of obsessives, Lewis/Philippe immersed themselves in the material, adding voices, instruments and effects, interrupted only once by Robert Rotifer visiting to throw in a few more touches of Telecaster. Their mission was to fully realize the sonic and harmonic potential of songs as varied as the partly portentous, partly (deceptively) jaunty opener "The Road to Somewhere", the catchy, XTC-flavoured "Pictures of Anna", the breezy-yet-apocalyptic space age groove of "Where Did We Go Wrong" or the piano-led Francophone waltz of "Une maison sans toit". It all adds up to a colorful mix of delicate textures, subtly sculpted reverb, melodic mellotron madness, Wilsonesque layered vocal harmonies, and the sort of long lost, very English whimsy it would take an anglophile Frenchman to evoke. And yet, in its transparent spaciousness dotted with charming detail, The Road To The Sea also brings to mind the sound of Summer Dancing, Andy Lewis' acclaimed 2017 collaboration with the late, great Judy Dyble.