Well now! Here we are again—back in the surreal sanctuary of Black Market Karma’s mind palace. If you caught my last blog on previous album Wobble, you’ll know I was completely spellbound by Stanley Belton’s knack for weaving woozy nostalgia with modern muscle. That album was a faded photograph brought to life, stitched together with decaying tape loops, vintage mellotron ghosts and heartfelt weirdness. And now, like some glimmering twin birthed from the same dream state, arrives Mellowmaker—album number twelve, and the second part of Belton’s two-album odyssey with Fuzz Club.
Where Wobble offered us a psychedelic hug and a mushroom-scented warm bath, Mellowmaker turns the dial just a smidge. It’s still steeped in Belton’s signature aesthetic. Dusty, saturated textures, reverbed vocals curling like incense smoke but here we find a more direct, beat-driven energy pulsing through the haze. The album oozes a strange lo-fi clarity, the bones of breakbeat hip-hop buried under layers of 60s melancholia, 90s neo-psych, and dreamlike experimentation. Belton said it himself: “They’re two sides of each other.” And he’s spot on. Mellowmaker is the yang to Wobble’s yin.
“With these two albums I’ve attempted to crystallise how it feels to be stuck between a feeling of amnesia of the soul and the earthly experience of piloting a meat suit… I’m still chasing that longing intangible ‘hiraeth’ feeling. The sense of wanting to find our way home to a place that maybe doesn’t exist.”
Let’s find our way to the turntable and get into this.
The title track sets the tone perfectly. It opens with an irresistible shuffle, sampled from a 60s hip-hop breakbeat compilation. Belton layers in Mellotron flutes and laconic guitar phrases before re-amping his own live drums into this thick, crunchy thud. The vocal floats above like a sigh on tape, gently haunted. Lyrically, it’s an anthem for the under-confident, a message to the quietly brilliant among us crippled by self-doubt. “The best of us often struggle,” Belton muses, and the melancholy defiance of that sentiment permeates every note.
‘Soft & Heavy’ is a standout from the off. That title captures the vibe neatly, swooning yet weighty, delicate but determined. The drums shuffle along gently like a roiling river of rhythm, while a woozy bass burrows deep into your ribs. Belton’s vocals really project and carry immense emotional heft. I keep coming back to that woozy cyclical bass motif that feels like it’s forever folding in on itself, warped and spinning. I’m hearing faint echoes of early Beck, mixed with the wall-of-sound production of Spectoresque proportions. The juxtaposition is disarming. And totally addictive.
Belton indulges his inner loop-obsessive next on ‘The Sound of Repetition’. The track spirals hypnotically, leaning into motorik territory without ever going full Krautrock. It’s got a trance-like tick tock propulsion, driven by repeating motifs that slowly evolve through subtle changes in texture and tone. The guitar work is sublime. Delay-drenched and daisy-chained into itself. This song burrows deep into your subconscious like a good mantra. A song to get lost in.
We go on a whimsical wee detour with ‘Flutterbug’. Light on its feet, with fluttery glockenspiel-like synths and a shuffling beat that recalls early Broadcast. There’s an almost tropical shimmer here, yet Belton grounds it with a bittersweet vocal that tugs at something deeply nostalgic. If ‘Waterbaby’ from Wobble was the a-side of your childhood memories, ‘Flutterbug’ is the B-side, the strange, forgotten half-formed dreams.
If you’re a follower of this blog you’ll know how much I love music that takes you away in your head. That’s exactly what Belton does here with ‘Coasting in Aquatica’. All aqueous textures and submerged sonics, it sounds like it was recorded inside a lava lamp. The guitars jangle with an underwater shimmer while the bassline undulates like seaweed in a current. There’s no urgency here, just a sense of fluid surrender. A track to float away on.
‘Jellylegger’ comes in claiming its instant classic status. This one grooves hard. The drum loop hits with that signature saturated slap, and the guitar riff has a syrupy swagger to it. Think Revolver era Beatles mixed with The Avalanches on downers. There’s a delicious stickiness to the whole thing. Belton’s voice oozes through the mix like honey, layered with harmonies that sound beamed in from a warped radio broadcast.
We pause for a short instrumental break with ‘Recalled by The Rays’. A haunting lullaby for space cowboys. The mellotron melodies here are achingly pretty. There’s a Lynchian quality on show like something playing on a jukebox in a parallel dimension.
As the name suggests, ‘Nautodelia’ is pure underwater psychedelia. The vibe is aquatic and narcotic in equal measure. Guitar’s tremble and melt, Mellotron drones ebb and flow like tides. There’s a murky dub influence at play here too, especially in the low-end sculpting. It’s music that evokes memory, decay, beauty—and the feeling that you’re swimming through all three.
‘Looper’ moves back into breakbeat territory. The beat hits hard and loops with surgical precision. Belton layers on fuzz-toned guitars and that signature mellotron haze. There’s a woozy sample-snare interplay that gives the track its hypnotic pulse. One for the headphone freaks and crate diggers alike.
Up next comes ‘Lagging Through The Soup Of Yesterday’. The title alone deserves applause. Sonically, this is like Boards of Canada if they grew up on LSD and sunshine pop. Tape hiss, detuned synths, warbly guitar and that signature Belton nostalgic haze over it all. It’s haunting, warm, and deeply human. A tone poem about time slippage, memory drift, and existential wobbles.
The album closes out with ‘Adoration’. A gentle shimmer of affection and melancholy, built around a potent guitar line and a sleepy backbeat. Belton’s vocals are full of quiet devotion, but also that hiraeth he keeps chasing—that longing for a home that might never have existed. As the final notes dissolve, we’re left in that liminal space Belton so expertly evokes: not quite awake, not quite dreaming.
Where Wobble was a postcard from the past, Mellowmaker feels like a photo negative—less playful perhaps, more contemplative, and shot through with a quiet, steady confidence. Belton continues to explore the boundaries of lo-fi psychedelia not just as a sound but as an emotion. These are albums to feel, not just hear. Albums that reach inside you and play your memories back through a broken tape machine. With Mellowmaker, Black Market Karma have deepened the rabbit hole. Two records made side by side, yet each casting its own shadow. Belton is crafting his own mythos now, one album at a time, and Mellowmaker is another crucial chapter. If you’re new to the world of BMK, now is the perfect time to dive in. Just bring your headphones, your heart, and maybe a half-forgotten dream or two.
Mellowmaker is out via Fuzz Club Records on June 6th 2025. Make sure you get on over to the Black Market Karma Bandcamp page and give them a follow.
You can follow Black Market Karma on social media here….
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