Yes my darlin', Rough Trade shop true love!

She Keeps Bees new album "Nests" is out now. From the three tracks I've heard and going by their previous releases, this must be one great album!

Photo by Bryan Bruchman

SHE KEEPS BEES
nests - rough trade exclusive with a bonus cd
Release Date: Pre-Release (Expected on 13/07/2009)
Visit the She Keeps Bees website

a rough trade exclusive with a bonus 10 track cd called 'minisink hotel'. a stunning, raw, sultry and absolutely essential album for those that love the 4 track demos of pj harvey and the early pre-croon of cat power. formed in 2006, brooklyn, she keeps bees are a couple / band you won't want to slap the crap out of. their music is bluesy, but not what you're thinking. jessica sings 'til her stomach hurts while andy holds down the rhythm - lumberjack style. the music is simple, gritty and downright sexy - howlin' wolf and millie jackson to start, but you'll probably hear pj harvey and cat power in there too. this homemade recording keeps it real simple: drums, guitar and little else. we absolutely adore this album. on names.

The recent delivery from the great Rough Trade Album Club (a music subscription service) was the outstanding 70s Retro Fusion Electro Pop Album by Beyond The Wizards Sleeve - this is SO cool!

BEYOND THE WIZARDS SLEEVE
beyond the wizards sleeve ark 1

Release Date: 25/08/2008
Previously released: 25/08/2008

Text from Rough Trade:

«we got a big one here! you don't wanna' miss this! richard norris, founding member of the grid, and london's premier dj, producer and remix maestro erol alkan have been releasing music under the beyond the wizard's sleeve moniker since 2007, when their first 12" sold out in a matter of days. then came the second, third and fourth releases, all selling out as soon as they hit the shelves. here is a collection of some of the finest moments from the 4 highly sought after 12's. this is a serious slice of esoteric, eclectic freakbeat weirdness. re-edited nuggets, long lost exotic psychedelia and krauty, disco beats are all mangled into previously unheard shapes. totally exclusive to rough trade, this is simply some of the most vital, mindbending and great music to be heard. do. not. miss.»

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Every month we compile the ten hottest album releases. As a member, you receive the most exciting album from this selection – we call it The Album. It comes with exclusive bonus material and a fold-out guide (see examples right, click to view as a pdf) that includes a members introduction to The Album by the artist.

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Young Marble Giants, «Colossal Youth» LP, Rough US 6, 1980. Alison Statton - Voice, Philip Moxham - Bass, Stuart Moxham - Guitar & Organ. Songs: Stuart Moxham except 3 songs with Philip Moxham, Alison Statton. Produced and Arranged by Young Marble Giants and Dave Anderson (Engineer)

What an astonishingly beautiful record..! The Young Marble Giants don't really compare, they produced a very unique sound. But if you like music as diverse as the Velvet Underground, PiL, Booker T & The MG's, Mouse on Mars, The Slits, Radiohead and Laurie Anderson – those kind of bands, you'll love this record too.

YMG in Cardiff photo by Andrew Tucker

The album was released in 1980 on Rough Trade Records as the band's debut release. It was an instant hit on the independent scene.
The trio are from Cardiff, Wales, and were together as band for only two years. They created an outstanding collection of stripped-down, marvellously austere music.
A three CD set of their entire material was put out last year in a nice package on Domino Records, including a booklet with photos and an excellent text by Simon Reynolds.

«Crucial to the band's crisp and dry sound was Stuart's Rickenbacker, "a very trebly guitar" which he played using "an extremely hard plectrum, called a shark fin, with a serrated edge." Throughout the YMG songbook, Stuart eschews lead-guitar flourishes and soloistic playing in favour of a signature style of scurrying rhythm guitar, its characteristic choppy quality reliant upon on a technique called "muting", where "you're basically resting the hand that you strum with on the strings." The result was a feel that was dynamic and propulsive yet curiously suppressed,subdued, even furtive. Philip played his bass high, sch that it was frequently mistaken by listeners for another guitar; indeed, with Stuart's playing so intensely rhythmic and stripped-down, the bassline was often the melodic thread in YMG songs. The brothers' instruments wound around each other like fibres twining into yarn. "We became immensely tight," says Stuart. He attributes their supernatural synchrony not just to fraternal closeness but to their use of machine rhythm. Instead of a human drummer, YMG twitched to the precision pulse of a very basic drum machine. "We were playing to what was effectively an electonic metronome", akin to the click-track used by sessions musicians in recording studios.
- Excerpt from Simon Reynolds text in the CD booklet