It was on a mountainside in Cumbria that the first whispers of Cate Le Bon’s fifth studio album poked their buds above the earth. “There’s a strange romanticism to going a little bit crazy and playing the piano to yourself and singing into the night,” she says, recounting the year living solitarily in the Lake District which gave way to Reward. By day, ever the polymath, Le Bon painstakingly learnt to make solid wood tables, stools and chairs from scratch; by night she looked to a second-hand Meers — the first piano she had ever owned —for company, “windows closed to absolutely everyone”, and accidentally poured her heart out. The result is an album every bit as stylistically varied, surrealistically-inclined and tactile as those in the enduring outsider’s back catalogue, but one that is also intensely introspective and profound; her most personal to date.
This sense of privacy maintained throughout is helped by the various landscapes within which Reward took shape: Stinson Beach, LA, and Brooklyn via Cardiff and The Lakes. Recording at Panoramic House [Stinson Beach, CA], a residential studio on a mountain overlooking the ocean, afforded Le Bon the ability to preserve the remoteness she had captured during the writing of Reward in Staveley, Lake District.
Over this extended period a cast of trusted and loved musicians joined Le Bon, Khouja and fellow co-producer Josiah Steinbrick — Stella Mozgawa (of Warpaint) on drums and percussion; Stephen Black (aka Sweet Baboo) on bass and saxophone and longtime collaborators Huw Evans (aka H.Hawkline) and Josh Klinghoffer on guitars — and were added to the album, “one by one, one on one”. The fact that these collaborators have appeared variously on Le Bon’s previous outputs no doubt goes some way to aid the preservation of a signature sound despite a relatively drastic change in approach.
Be it on her more minimalist, acoustic-leaning 2009 debut album Me Oh My or critically acclaimed, liquid-riffed 2013 LP Mug Museum as well as 2016s Crab Day, Cate Le Bon’s solo work — and indeed also her production work, such as that carried out on recent Deerhunter album Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? (4AD, January 2019) — has always resisted pigeonholing, walking the tightrope between krautrock aloofness and heartbreaking tenderness; deadpan served with a twinkle in the eye, a flick of the fringe and a lick of the Telecaster.
The multifaceted nature of Le Bon’s art — its ability to take on multiple meanings and hold motivations which are not immediately obvious — is evident right down to the album’s very name. “People hear the word ‘reward’ and they think that it’s a positive word” says Le Bon, “and to me it’s quite a sinister word in that it depends on the relationship between the giver and the receiver. I feel like it’s really indicative of the times we’re living in where words are used as slogans, and everything is slowly losing its meaning.” The record, then, signals a scrambling to hold onto meaning; it is a warning against lazy comparisons and face values. It is a sentiment nicely summed up by the furniture-making musician as she advises: “Always keep your hand behind the chisel.”

Even in the increasingly crowded field of electronic music, Kelly Lee Owens’ debut album arrives as a wonderful surprise. An album that bridges the gaps between cavernous techno, spectral pop, and krautrock’s mechanical pulse, 'Kelly Lee Owens' brims with exploratory wonder, establishing a personal aesthetic that is as beguiling as it is thrillingly familiar.

Cate Le Bon’s wondrous sixth album exists in a waking dreamscape whose locked-in grooves approach the unknowable at slanted angles.

Built around lyrics from presumed-dead founding member Richey Edwards and recorded by Steve Albini, the Manics' latest finds them revitalized.

组建不久的威尔士女声乐团,半个月前发行首张EP,专辑月底紧随上市.虽然专辑的整体风格偏向商业化流行,但是旋律上却充盈着淳浓质朴的民谣气息,女主唱清亮的嗓音也是别具吸引力.

Ian M Hazeldine records under the alias Antonymes, hailing from Hawarden, a small village in North Wales, whose most famous inhabitant was William Ewart Gladstone. He creates atmospheric melodies, using various pianos, celesta, strings, church organ and field recordings, and has had releases on Soundcolours, Cathedral Transmissions, Hidden Shoal, Time Released Sound and Rural Colours.
With a long standing interest in music making and active listening, Hazeldine works with any influences, from his surrounding landscape to the artists he has worked with. His compositions often take on a semi-improvised structure with accidental atmospheres used as a starting point. As well as his own projects, Hazeldine also works with Marconi Union's Richard Talbot, under the name Prospector. He also works as a graphic designer, film maker and photographer, having art directed many of the Hibernate releases including our critically acclaimed vinyl series, and has worked with many other artists and labels including Facture, Field Rotation and Olan Mill.
In late 2009 Antonymes released 'Beauty Becomes the Enemy of the Future' on Cathedral Transmissions of which the CD is now unavailable. Since then he has revisited the album, which has culminated a new release, 'There Can Be No True Beauty Without Decay'. Hazeldine's own reworkings are intertwined with those of friends Ian Hawgood, Isnaj Dui, Offthesky, Field Rotation, Wil Bolton, Spheruleus and James Banbury to create an album of captivating melancholy and beauty. The guest reworkings venture into other, darker territories, where one might be harder pressed to identify the original material.
The sleeve features beautiful images of the North Wales landscape by Richard Outram, fitting the music perfectly.

A new force in song craft, Cate Le Bon resides in Cardiffm Wales's French quarter and befitting a songwriter who only writes in the dark, her music is a heady and personal Gallic stew of equal parts Nico, Malkmus and the chronicler's own observations on the impossibility of existence. Drawing on her experiences of 2011, Cate created collection of pop nuggets imbued with the playfulness of Faust and Syd Barrett and the tropical melodies of Os Mutantes. Existential word play and fuzz fused guitar lines tear through like an angry bee in a CAN on Cyrk.

Welsh singer Cate Le Bon has finished her third album, Mug Museum, which will be released November 12 via Wichita. The album was made in Los Angeles (where Cate now resides) with producer Noah Georgeson whos previously worked with Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart. Thats the cover art above and you can check out the first released cut, a lovely duet with Perfume Genius titled "I Think I Knew," and the album tracklist below.

The 23-year-old singer's Can You Hear Me Now? EP — written over two years — delivered on all that chatter, featuring seven perfect songs that unfold like textbook pop. Every chapter carefully studied. Every technique flawlessly executed.