Wednesday's Forthcoming Releases [Part I]

HOT CHIP ‘One Life Stand’ [Release Date 01/02/2010]
CD: http://991.com/Buy/ProductInformation.aspx?StockNumber=495459

CD/DVD: http://991.com/Buy/ProductInformation.aspx?StockNumber=495462

Hot Chip are back with the stunning fourth studio album 'One Life Stand' released 1st February 2010 on Parlophone records.

'One Life Stand' is a full-blooded leap into the unknown, an album that is awash with Hot Chip's trademark creative bravery and a searing emotional intensity from first track to last. Indeed, 'One Life Stand' is by far and away Hot Chip's most complete body of work to date, an album that is more cohesive and more soulful than 2007's ambidextrous 'Made In The Dark' and more ambitious than 2005's Mercury nominated and Grammy award nominated 'The Warning', 'One Life Stand' is an album that establishes Hot Chip as one of the most relevant and creative bands of our era.

With Joe Goddard, Alexis Taylor, Felix Martin, Al Doyle and Owen Clarke at the helm it is no surprise that they borrow, create and take inspiration from a plethora of influences. 'One Life Stand' sees a proliferation of influences as diverse as the burgeoning UK funky scene to soul music, modern R&B, Northern Soul, Gospel, Golden Age Electronica, Detroit House, Southern soul, the sounds of Arthur Russell, Prince and Theo Parish, and they all sit effortlessly alongside the band's signature pop aesthetics, wild electronics, off kilter beats and intoxicating musical experimentation in a way that only Hot Chip can execute.

The songs for 'One Life Stand' were largely written around the piano, the Wurlitzer, or the Prophet keyboard, and demoed at Alexis' and Joe's respective home studios. They were then taken to Lanark Studio which Al and Felix own and run, to be fully produced and fleshed out with the three remaining band members. In addition, recording contributions from legendary innovators of their respective fields Charles Hayward (This Heat), and Fimber Bravo (Steel n' Skin), as well as newer musicians Leo Taylor (The Invisible), and string arrangers and experimental composers Emma Smith and Vince Sipprell (Geese), were added to elevate the record further.

The finished record is Hot Chip's most up-front, coherent and melodically bold record to date; an uncluttered, warm and soulful, uplifting and heart-on-sleeve collection. Featuring the archetypal Hot Chip song, title track and first single, 'One Life Stand', built on a metronomic but pulsing groove, and reaching up to a joyously simple/naive chorus of monogamous embracement, the album is from start to finish one of love - euphoric, nostalgic, brotherly, realistic even. It is mainly a sequence of club classic stompers - from the anthemic 'Hand Me Down Your Love' to the life-affirming absurdist black humour of 'I Feel Better' - tempered with the contemplative, tender realism of 'Slush', and the romantic melancholy of 'Alley Cats'. Take it in, if you will; it's all for you.

PETER GABRIEL ‘Scratch My Back’ [Release Date 15/02/2010]
CD: http://991.com/Buy/ProductInformation.aspx?StockNumber=495470

2CD: http://991.com/Buy/ProductInformation.aspx?StockNumber=495472

Peter Gabriel will release his 'Scratch My Back' album project on February 15th 2010 on Virgin Records. The album is the first part of a series of song exchanges in which Gabriel and other leading artists reinterpret each other's songs.

To help craft his recording of the album's eclectic array of cult favourites and classic tracks, Gabriel enlisted former Durutti Column member John Metcalfe, composer, arranger and the expertise of producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd's 'The Wall', Lou Reed's 'Berlin') and engineer, mixer and producer Tchad Blake (Suzanne Vega, Sheryl Crow, Tom Waits).

Gabriel describes this as a very personal record with twelve songs performed only with orchestral instruments and voice. He made the choice not to include guitar or drums. The album's richly diverse sounds include the sparse romance of Lou Reed's 'The Power of the Heart', the powerful musical journey of Elbow's 'Mirrorball' and an epic arrangement of Arcade Fire's 'My Body Is A Cage'.

Gabriel and his collaborators recorded the album at George Martin's Air Lyndhurst Studios and the Real World Temple with further editing and mixing at his own Real Worlds Studio in Wiltshire. The first public hearing of the album came when Peter Gabriel opened his set at last summer's WOMAD festival with a performance of Paul Simon's 'The Boy In The Bubble'.
 

MASSIVE ATTACK ‘Heligoland’ [Release Date 08/02/2010]
CD: http://991.com/Buy/ProductInformation.aspx?StockNumber=495477

Massive Attack are releasing their fifth studio album 'Heligoland' on 8th February. Massive Attack are a seminal group of musical innovators whose early work

detonated the Bristol music scene of the early 90's and unwittingly gave birth to "trip-hop". The group formed in 1987 around their influential and legendary Dug Out club and Jamaican-style soundsystem. The club played a groundbreaking blend of hip hop, new wave reggae, early house and techno which shaped their hugely acclaimed 1991 debut, 'Blue Lines'.

The new album 'Heligoland' features guest vocals from Damon Albarn, Hope Sandoval, Martina Topley-Bird, Guy Garvey and Tunde Adebimpe. Long time cohort Horace Andy makes a return alongside Massive Attack founding members Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall.

Damon also plays bass on 'Flat Of The Blade' and keyboards on 'Splitting The Atom' while Portishead's Adrian Utley plays guitar on 'Saturday Come Slow'. The band also collaborated with DFA's Tim Goldsworthy on selected tracks.
 

MIGHTY BABY ‘Tasting The Life - Live 1971’ [Release Date 08/02/2010]
CD: http://991.com/Buy/ProductInformation.aspx?StockNumber=495480

Mighty Baby are one of the best-loved bands to have emerged from Britain's late 1960s underground, and this is the fullest live record of them in existence. Taped as they opened for Quintessence at Malvern's Winter Gardens on Saturday February 20th 1971, the set finds the quintet poised between the driving psychedelia of their 1969 debut and the more contemplative sound of their second and final album, 'A Jug Of Love'. It's rounded off by two tracks recorded at Glastonbury in June of the same year, and comes complete with a booklet featuring rare images and notes from band members Ian Whiteman and Mike Evans, making it an essential artefact for the Babe's many admirers.
 

TRIPSICHORD ‘Tripsichord Music Box’ [Release Date 8/02/2010]
CD: http://991.com/Buy/ProductInformation.aspx?StockNumber=495484

In the last gasp of San Francisco acid rock, Tripsichord Music Box recorded an album of cheery, hippie-vibed music that was already on the verge of becoming anachronistic upon its 1971 release..this special edition cd includes the rare singles to complete the package.