I’ve said it before; they must be adding essence of shoegaze to the water in Ireland. The new sounds bursting from the Irish shoegaze scene right now is testament. You can feel it. And right in the middle of that growing storm is Silk, the solo project from Michael Smyth, guitarist and songwriter for Belfast favourites Virgins.
Where Virgins lean into shimmering textures and sharp hooks, Silk pulls the sound in a different direction. Heavier. Moodier. More expansive. After announcing the project with the outstanding debut single ‘Faze’, which I covered here earlier in the year, Smyth returns now with ‘but then, yes’. A track that feels darker and more patient, but no less urgent.
It opens in a daze. The guitars don’t just chime, they loom. Dense waves of tone drift in slowly, then stretch out like they’re filling every corner of the mix. There’s a sense that something’s coming, but the track doesn’t rush. It hangs in that moment, letting the air thicken. The vocal pairing here is key. Smyth brings in AJ Das from Dublin’s Picture Postcard, whose presence shifts the whole balance. There’s an intimacy to Das’ voice that cuts through the haze. Their combined delivery adds a sort of call and response tension, but never in a neat or obvious way. Everything is submerged. You catch glimpses, not statements.
Lyrically, Smyth has said the song is about the slow transition of relationships—how things edge from platonic into something messier, deeper, more emotionally entangled. The music mirrors that shift. It doesn’t arrive with a bang. It creeps in. The emotions underneath it are uneasy but real.
Production-wise, it’s handled with care. Smyth recorded and performed everything himself before passing it over to trusted collaborators. The mix comes from Jonny Woods (Wynona Bleach, 1980 Something Studios), and it hits with full weight.
This release also arrives ahead of the first Silk live shows. Members of Broncos, Ferals, and Wynona Bleach will be joining Smyth on stage, forming a full band ready to bring this sound into the physical world. Expect sheer volume and emotional intensity in equal measure.
With ‘but then, yes’, Silk takes the sound fashioned for ‘Faze’ and turns it up just a little more. There’s more space, more ambition, more depth. It confirms what I suspected: this isn’t a side project, this is something fully-formed, alive, and growing.
Shoegaze needs bands that take risks with noise and feeling. Silk is doing both. This track cements them as one of the most essential new acts in the scene.
Coming Up Roses arrived on the underground radar with the youthful shimmer of Waters in 2019, matured through the bittersweet reflections of Everything Is in 2021, and sharpened their melodic bite on the self‑titled EP that followed last year. Each release hinted at bigger statements to come, yet none predicted quite how emotionally wide this debut would swing.
This is a band that have taken their time. This album has been quietly building in the background, tucked between festival sets, the aforementioned EP drops and a slow but steady word-of-mouth groundswell. With roots split between Singapore and the UK, they’ve never felt locked into one scene or sound. Instead, they’ve carved out something personal, guitar music that isn’t afraid to be tender, loud, and completely transparent.
There’s a definite shift here. How Did We Fall So Far? feels more exposed than anything they’ve done before. The songs go deeper, linger longer, and aren’t looking for easy exits. I asked the band to tell us more about this change in tone.
“We drew a lot on our personal emotional journey of our move from Singapore to the UK. This record touches on emotions that people would not necessarily want to show the world, but we wanted people to be able to relate to them and through that, let them know that it’s okay to feel these things.”
‘Hello Miss Anxiety’ is our opener and it drifts in on a hush of cymbal wash before Emily pleads, “Hello Miss Anxiety, will you go quietly?”. Guitars flicker like faulty neon, building a pulse that mirrors a racing heartbeat. When the chorus blooms the band let distortion spread in every direction, turning a personal panic attack into an anthem that still feels strangely communal.
Up next ‘I’m In Bed’ is a track that folds in on itself. The band lean into restraint here. The pacing while up there is also heavy, like dragging a duvet across your entire body just to block out the day. What’s powerful is how little they do with so much impact. No tricks. Just a sense of stillness, disorientation, and the vague idea that nothing really helps even when it should. It’s honest in a way that feels brave. The last note finishing on an almost unresolved crescendo just seals the deal.
We stride in to power ballad territory with ‘Over Your Head’. There’s a weight hanging over this one. The drums whilst measured move forward with purpose, guitars flicker like light on the water. It plays with expectations, on yourself, on others and the way those can grow until you can’t move without feeling crushed by the pressure. It never shouts. It just keeps pushing forward, shoulders hunched, jaw clenched. That sense of trying to hold it all together is felt in every measured beat.
With ‘Little Guy’ the tone changes. It’s sharper, more direct. A protest song wrapped in frustration and half-swallowed rage. The band tighten their grip, with the rhythm section punching through the mix and the guitars suddenly carrying more bite. There’s real tension in the delivery. You can hear the fatigue of being overlooked, but it never folds into self-pity. The softest guitar tone on the album becomes the backdrop for its angriest vocal. Emily spits “Ah, hate to be the little guy” while Charlie Wilson’s bass rumbles like distant thunder. This is a confrontation, not a confession.
Glistening chorus‑laden guitars nod to an early Cranberries influence on ‘Billie and Allie’. The subject matter here is mortality. Lines such as “Billie, won’t you tell me your secret to escaping?” hang in the air like candle smoke. A dreamlike swirl of questions that never quite find answers. The band strip back the noise and let Emilys powerful vocal shine through. Despite the sombre subject matter the song sounds joyous.
‘Tired’ is possibly the most physically felt song on the album. The repetition in the structure mimics that brain-fog burnout perfectly. The band keep things circular, almost hypnotic, as if trying to replicate the loops of overthinking and emotional fatigue. There’s a resignation in the delivery that hits hard but not because it’s sad, but because it’s so familiar.
The band single out ‘Gotta Lose It All’ as the focus cut for good reason. This is pure catharsis. The melody is euphoric and all consuming. The guitars drive the song along with intent but also with reall care and sympathy to the nature of the lyrics. Just check out when Emily sings “Don’t know how it happened” looping over and over while the band stack layer on layer until the song becomes a tidal wave. For this isn’t just the best song in the album, it’s the best song they’ve written to date.
Piano takes centre stage for ‘I Miss You’, offering fragile footing for a portrait of grief. There’s a stillness to this one that feels sacred. No posturing, no need to impress. Just grief, laid bare. The arrangement gives the song room to breathe, to pause, to cry if it needs to. One of the album’s most disarming moments that’s so relatable as we have all felt that loss. The mix allows empty space to ring around each chord. It’s so powerful.
‘Awake’ is a slow descent into the kind of insomnia that blurs lines between nightmare and waking. The arrangement swells and recedes like shallow breathing, mirroring the liminal state between nightmare and dawn. The guitars loop and shimmer like flickering light from a hallway bulb that never quite stays on. Never settling, the song shifts shape as it goes. Every corner feels just slightly off. A sonic portrait of unrest that lands somewhere between surreal and terrifying.
The title track steps back from interior monologue to ask the world at large, “How Did We Fall So Far?’ This, the final track feels less like a conclusion and more like the start of another hard question. The band strip back again here, making space for doubt, discomfort and reflection. It’s less about finding meaning and more about admitting you don’t have any left in the tank. It doesn’t fade out, it just steps away quietly, as if unsure if anything else needs to be said.
Coming Up Roses have stretched every lesson from their EP years into something deeper and braver. The record traces anxiety, loss, and exhaustion yet somehow lands on possibility. It’s full of worn-out thoughts, grief that still stings, and those heavy quiet days when you’re not sure who you are anymore. The band doesn’t rush to fix anything. They just sit with it. And that, somehow, is exactly what makes this record stick. If any of these songs mirror your own late‑night inner voice, press play again and let them keep you company. Then tell a friend. Music like this deserves to travel.
It’s been only a few months since Whitelands released their astonishing debut album Night-bound Eyes are Blind to the Day, and already they’re switching gears. If that LP was a late-night soul search soundtracked by rain-smeared lights and celestial haze, then their new standalone single ‘Heat Of The Summer’ is the moment the clouds’ part and the golden light comes streaming in.
There’s a surge of energy here that’s hard to ignore. It bursts out the gate with jangling guitars, bright and clear, underpinned by a rhythm section that moves with a spring in its step. The warmth is immediate. No long intros, no slow builds — just straight in with a groove that feels like sunshine on your back and pavement heat rising under your shoes.
What makes ‘Heat Of The Summer’ so striking is how effortlessly it catches a mood. The band don’t reach for nostalgia or cliché. They simply lock into a feeling and let it run. The guitars have a crisp, almost breezy quality, like they’re catching the light just right. There’s a looseness to the playing that makes everything feel alive in the moment, full of joy and motion.
Etienne’s vocals are more centred and confident than ever. Gone is the gentle murmur of earlier tracks. Here, he sings with intent, clear and present, delivering lines with a kind of quiet urgency that draws you in immediately. There’s no shyness. His voice carries the melody boldly, weaving through the chords with an easy charm. It’s the sound of someone stepping forward rather than retreating inward.
This track’s pacing also deserves credit. At just under three minutes, it never overstays its welcome. The chorus arrives early and clean, lifting the whole song skywards. It’s melodic and memorable with the kind of hook that settles in before you even realise you’re singing it back. There’s something carefree in the structure. The band sounds like they’re playing for the joy of it, not to prove a point.
While the lyrical tone still carries that introspective undercurrent Whitelands are known for, it’s presented through a brighter lens. Lines flicker with gentle yearning, but the overall atmosphere remains light on its feet. It’s not about retreat or reflection this time. It’s about movement, connection, and staying open to the warmth when it comes.
The decision to release this track on a flexi disc is such a perfect touch. It suits the fleeting, glowing quality of the song. Like something you find tucked into a summer fanzine or passed along from a mate who gets what you’re into. It feels like a postcard from the band. A snapshot.
And there’s more to come. Whitelands recently confirmed that album two is nearly complete. If ‘Heat Of The Summer’ is a sign of what direction they’re heading in, then we’re in for something special.
Available now as a limited-edition flexi disc via Sonic Cathedral and across all digital platforms. Flexis don’t last forever — neither do summers. Grab it while you can.
You can follow Whitelands on social media here……….
It’s always a red-letter day at Static Sounds Club when new music drops from Just Mustard. You can hear me bouncing off the walls with excitement from miles away. Ever since Wednesday scrambled my senses back in 2018, they’ve remained a band whose every move feels like a tectonic shift. When Heart Under hit in 2022, it felt like stepping inside a black box recorder mid-fall. Dense textures. Gnarled guitars. Katie Ball’s voice moving through the cracks like light through shutters. There’s always been something elemental about their sound. It doesn’t wash over you. It pulls you under.
They’ve been relatively quiet since then. Touring, yes. Picking up new disciples in dark rooms across the globe. But now they’ve broken the silence with a new single. It’s called ‘Pollyanna’ and it’s an absolute stunner.
From the off, ‘Pollyanna’ plants you on uneasy ground. The pulse of seismic feedback becomes the back bone of the track. That drum pattern throbs with a robotic precision. It feels less like a beat and more like the ticking of something buried and mechanical. There’s a faint metallic taste to the sound. The guitars flicker and flash but there’s no fuzz or chaos here. They’ve been stripped back to pure function, gleaming and sharpened like surgical tools.
Katie’s vocals glide through the mix with an unnerving stillness. Her delivery, as always is close and confessional. There’s no drama, no reaching for the rafters. Just quiet detachment. It’s cold but never lifeless. If anything, that blankness is what makes it hit so hard. She sounds like she’s narrating a dream while still inside it. What really gets under the skin is how locked in the band feel. Every part has its place. No one’s overreaching. The song feels airtight. It’s not minimal in a sparse way but there’s zero clutter. Everything feeds the mood. That creeping dread. That dead-eyed calm.
There’s talk that the title references Pollyanna syndrome. A kind of forced optimism that denies reality at all costs. You can hear that idea in the song’s bones. There’s a tension between the mechanical groove and the eerie restraint of the vocal. Like smiling through a migraine. It never quite explodes. It just sits there. Staring.
It’s hard to tell whether this is the beginning of a new album cycle but it certainly feels like a statement. They’re pushing the template again. Less abstraction. More control. A new kind of precision. The raw emotion is still there but it’s being channelled through colder veins. That’s a thrilling direction for a band who’ve always been fearless in how they evolve.
‘Pollyanna’ is out now via Partisan Records and is absolutely worth your full attention. Stick it on. Let it sink in. But watch out! It whispers to you, waits for you to come closer and once you’re in there’s no way back. Why would you want to?
Homework are a band that never really set out to be a band in the traditional sense. They didn’t emerge from a polished plan or a scene with capital letters. No, Homework began as two blokes playing acoustic guitars in a public park during lockdown. It was lo-fi from day one. An act of quiet rebellion wrapped in rusted strings and awkward rhythms. Yet, what started as a pandemic pastime has grown into one of Glasgow’s most thrilling new indie outfits.
The group consists of Michael Newton (guitar and vocals), Santiago Taberna (guitar and vocals), Andrew Gordon (bass and vocals) and Lizzie Quirke (drums and percussion). They’re all fully committed slackers with proper jobs, and that tension, between the everyday and the transcendental, is written into every riff and rhythm. Theirs is a sound carved out in cramped practice spaces with cherished guitars and gear that works when it feels like it. This is fuzz pop held together with duct tape and dreams. It is volatile and warm, heartfelt and sarcastic. A band built by hand, in every sense.
Homework wear their love of Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth and Teenage Fanclub proudly. These are reference points, sure, but they’re never just pastiche. This is not homage. It is inheritance. And for a band made up of adopted Glaswegians, that connection to the city is crucial. Glasgow is in the jokes, the gear failures, the offhand lyrics and the community. Their New Year’s Eve support slot for none other than Norman Blake of the Fanclub wasn’t just a gig. It was a quiet, weird triumph.
They are now two EPs deep and I think it’s fair to say Homework have created a world that feels immediately familiar but never boring. They have a very democratic band structure with no one claiming frontperson title and Santiago, Michael and Andrew all writing songs. No frontperson. No ego. Just beautifully democratic DIY chaos.
I asked the band what first brought them together.
“Pavement and our drummer friend Forbes who brought together the first band iteration, which included Michael and Santiago. After Covid hit, they both kept the project alive and eventually, through a series of connections via our web of Glasgow music, Lizzie and Andrew joined in consolidating the current quartet.”
“We’re also first and foremost pretty good friends that get along and love music, collaborating creatively and having a pint. Our sense of humour is shared, as is our drive to keep things scrappy, loose, yet heartfelt and fun. Slacker ethos we suppose.”
Their first release was an expression of that very ethos. The Homework EP was released back in 2023. Let’s dive in and give it a spin.
The opener ‘If You Believe Me is the perfect introduction to the band. Immediately you get the sense they’re not trying to impress anyone — but somehow, they do anyway. A woozy rhythm guitar lays the groundwork for a half-sung vocal that is all charm and feeling. The song feels intimate without being precious. The melodies wander slightly but never get lost. There’s real warmth here, the kind that lingers long after the last note fades. Not so much a handshake greeting but a big drunken hug of a song.
There’s something gloriously aimless about ‘Paper’, and I mean that in the best way. It lopes rather than drives, jangling along on a mid-tempo groove that feels like it might dissolve at any moment but never does. The guitars chime and curl lazily around each other, loose but locked in, giving off that slightly woozy quality that slacker pop thrives on. You can feel the Pavement influence but it doesn’t feel like mimicry. It’s more like they’ve soaked it in over years of late-night listening and let it seep into their bloodstream. What really stands out is the band’s restraint. ‘Paper’ doesn’t chase a payoff. It doesn’t build to a huge chorus or collapse into noise. Instead, it sits comfortably in its own skin, spinning its wheels just enough to let the atmosphere settle.
The closer ‘Don’t Tell Me To Sit’ is packed with attitude but still friendly enough to shout along with. The delivery has bite, but the overall tone is more playful than pissed off. The drumming drives this one forward with just the right amount of swing, punch and punctuation. The title feels like a mission statement and the hook is undeniable. There’s also that magic balance between fun and fury that makes great slacker pop so addictive.
So, one year later the band dropped the Easy Money EP. I asked them what they differently when recording this one.
“Easy Money is the first EP in which all the current members wrote all parts and felt very collaborative. The Homework EP included bass parts written by Tom (our first bassist) but played by Andrew. And in Easy Money we even got Andrew’s banging song Marina Bay Sands in, bringing more variety to just Santiago and Michael singing.”
“We also spent a bit more time in the little details like harmonies, trying to get weird cool sounds and experimenting with song structure. The first EP was probably closer to a live session whilst this EP feels more constructed and a conscious effort to expand the band’s sound palette. It was the first time we collaborated with Melissa Brisbane, who recorded us and is an absolute delight to work with.”
With those words ringing in our ears lets dive in to the Easy Money EP.
From the first note of ‘Dummy Run’ it lets you know that Homework are stepping it up. Not in a flashy way. They are still unpolished and charming, but the confidence is different now. The guitars hit harder, the vocals are more assured, and the groove sits just right. There is a sense of forward motion throughout this track. The chorus is proper catchy without ever feeling too composed. It is a song that tumbles forward with a grin on its face. You can feel the camaraderie through the speakers. This one is a winner.
Next ‘How Can You’ slows things down and opens a softer side of the band. Dreamy and a bit sad in that deeply satisfying way. It feels like a late-night walk with your thoughts. There is a real feeling of space and room in the mix here that gives the song a new kind of power. The vocals are on it and genuine. There are three killer melodies on show and each plays its part. Almost like if The Libertines were covering a lost ballad from The Pastels. Beautiful stuff.
Final track ‘Marina Bay Sands’ is easily one of the most intriguing songs in their catalogue so far. There’s a woozy sun drunk quality to this track. The melody is hazy and the production feels just a little off kilter, like it is leaning sideways. It is both escapist and grounded, like dreaming of holidays from the kitchen sink. The chorus is understated but earwormy. A brilliant closer that shows the full range of what Homework can do. You’ll hit repeat without even realising.
It’s rare to find a band this early in their life who already sound this comfortable in their own skin. Homework aren’t chasing trends. They’re not crafting songs for algorithm playlists or trying to go viral. What they are doing is building a discography filled with sincerity, humour, fuzz and heart. They are one of those rare groups that make you want to pick up a guitar and start your own band. Not because it looks easy, but because it looks like so much fun.
You can hear the rehearsal room in these tracks. The in jokes. The shared glances. The mistakes that turn into magic. There is no studio polish, no industry sheen — just four people making music they believe in, with just enough chaos to keep it thrilling. Isn’t that what it’s all about.
Scotland’s experimental undercurrents have never been short of strange brilliance, but Because, everyone is wrong about everything all the time, the debut full-length from Lo-Fi Melancholia for Kids (LFMFK), finds a way to thread that well-worn seam with a needle dipped in something entirely new. The man behind the moniker, Adam O’Sullivan, is no stranger to sonic trickery. His past work with Japan Review was already pricking up ears with its gauzy textures and spectral edges, but this latest venture pushes even further into leftfield territory. Here, O’Sullivan doesn’t just blur genre lines — he wanders off the page entirely, and the result is a treasure map that’s half-smeared in noise, half-glowing in neon.
From the outset, LFMFK strikes a deeply personal tone without ever tipping into the confessional. It’s an album built on contradictions — hazy yet focused, melancholic yet playfully weird, fractured but utterly danceable — and it carries the sort of experimental pop sensibility that owes a debt to the likes of The Notwist and Broadcast, while still sounding stubbornly like its own thing. It’s not trying to impress you; it’s just trying to get something across before it disappears in a puff of drum-machine smoke.
Let’s dive in and go track by track.
Opener ‘Energetic Midfield Player’ kicks things off like a clunky Casio waking up in the middle of a lucid dream. There’s something almost comic in its title, but what unfolds is a murky, hyper-melodic loopfest. Skittering percussion that feels like it’s about to fall apart at any moment, propped up by scuzzy guitar that towers over the mix. O’Sullivan layers glitchy fragments like he’s scoring a crumbling VHS memory of a lost Strokes track. There’s a warmth in the wooziness, and the track sets the tone perfectly: this is music made by a human being for other slightly-broken human beings.
With ‘The Dark Outside’, things shift towards something more atmospheric, edging into ambient-pop territory. The intro vocals are ghosted in, distant and spectral, never quite letting you in but inviting you to hover just outside the window. When the drums come in there’s an emotional core that feels quietly devastating. It’s not so much sad as it is overwhelmed, capturing that late-night loneliness when your own thoughts are too loud.
‘The Arrow’ injects a jolt of energy back into the mix. It’s twitchy and fragmented, hopping between ideas like it’s trying on jackets in a vintage shop. There’s a tactile quality to the production — drum machines clatter like toy robots on linoleum floors, while rubbery synth lines swoop in and out like startled birds. It’s a burst of anxious energy that vanishes just as you start to dance along.
Up next ‘Smog’ trades the album’s scattershot energy for something far more stripped back. An open, slow-burning meditation built around acoustic guitar, whispery vocals, and a soft undercurrent of droning synth. There’s an almost eerie stillness to it, like stepping into a quiet room after leaving a chaotic street. The guitar loops gently, hypnotically, while Adam’s voice hovers just above a whisper — cracked, close-miked and half-swallowed, like it’s unsure whether it wants to be heard at all. It’s intimate to the point of discomfort, but beautiful in its restraint. It’s one of the most vulnerable pieces on the record, quietly devastating in its simplicity, and it lingers long after it’s gone.
As its title suggests, ‘Isolate’ strips things back. It opens with a tinny, clattering drum machine and jangly guitars that feel like they’ve been left out in the rain — brittle, chiming, and just slightly out of sync. There’s a lo-fi tension from the start, a feeling that everything is holding itself together with frayed tape. Adam’s vocals come through washed in distortion, not quite buried but definitely blurred — a voice pushed through a busted amp, more texture than lyric. As the track progresses, a pulsing bassline begins to assert itself underneath, grounding the shimmer in something darker and more determined. Guitars start to clang and clash, turning from jangle to something harsher, more metallic. The whole song gradually mutates into a hypnotic, propulsive march, like it’s gathering static and weight with every passing bar. What begins as a fragile bedroom recording morphs into something much more forceful and unrelenting. It’s a stunning shift — subtle at first, but by the time it peaks, you’re completely caught in its momentum. ‘Isolate’ captures a very specific kind of emotional drift
Possibly the album’s most cinematic moment, ‘Under Green Discount Light’ feels like a detour into haunted supermarket dream pop. The textures here are lush, smeared with synth pads and static crackle, and the track unfolds slowly, like someone watching their youth play out on a security monitor. O’Sullivan taps into a sense of cultural detritus. Discount culture, old advertising aesthetics, half-remembered slogans and somehow turns it into something beautiful. It’s both nostalgic and alien, a lost signal from a world that never quite existed.
‘Ragland’ pares things right back to their emotional core. Gone are the glitches and clatter — in their place is a lo-fi piano that sounds like it’s being played in an abandoned room, half-lit and dust-coated. Each note feels fragile, deliberate, and deeply human, as though it might fall apart if pressed any harder. An organ hums gently underneath, woozy and warm, like the last rays of sunlight creeping through a window at the end of the day. The vocals are drenched in reverb, ghostlike and soft, more felt than clearly heard. They drift across the track like distant thoughts, lost in the mix but never aimless. There’s a real sense of space here — not emptiness, but intimacy. You’re placed inside the song, close enough to hear the fingers lift from keys, close enough to feel the air shift when the chords change. I absolutely love this track.
Closer ‘Spare Century’ is the album’s quiet exit. Built around a gently played acoustic guitar, it unfolds at an unhurried pace, each note given space to breathe. Over the top, a fuzz-drenched lead guitar drips out single, deliberate notes. Slow and mournful, almost like it’s remembering a melody rather than playing it. The contrast between the clean acoustic and the scorched electric creates a beautiful tension, tender and raw at once. A lo-fi organ floats just beneath, barely rising above a hum, but it gives the track a quiet warmth. There are no drums, no rhythm section, just a feeling of time stretching out and dissolving. It’s an anti-anthem, a song that refuses resolution, content instead to drift slowly toward silence.
There’s something very special about Because, everyone is wrong about everything all the time. It’s not just that it’s a strong debut, it’s the way it invites you to peer into its strange and beautiful mess without ever holding your hand. O’Sullivan has managed to fuse the scrappy charm of lo-fi indie with the expansive curiosity of electronic exploration, and he’s done it with a wink rather than a sermon. At a time when so much music feels pre-polished and algorithmic, LFMFK offers something looser, weirder, and far more alive. This is the sound of someone throwing sonic ideas at the wall not to impress, but to see what kind of shadows they cast when the light hits just right.
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.
I love me a bit of psych rock. Particularly when the band playing said psych rock are pushing at the edges of the genre, trying new things and moving the whole thing forward. Frankie and the Witch Fingers have never been ones to sit still. Over the past decade, they’ve evolved from California psych-rock freakouts into a bonafide genre-mutant beast. With Trash Classic, their latest long-player, they double down on the chaos. They twist it, melt it, and launch it through a wormhole of synthetic slime and industrial-grade bile. The result is an album that feels like it’s been stitched together from broken machines, bad dreams, and manic sugar highs.
This is a record born not in some pastoral studio retreat but in the real-deal grit of Vernon, Los Angeles. That rawness drips into every second of Trash Classic but it’s in the studio alchemy of Oakland’s Tiny Telephone with producer Maryam Qudus where the band crackled into new forms. There’s a messiness here, but it’s purposeful. The sound of a band gleefully breaking their own toys to build something new.
The band had a lot of fun making the album, listen to this.
“Every day of recording began with cartoons blaring at full volume—a Looney Tunes ritual that turned the madness of the recording process into something childlike. Late at night, sugar-fuelled candy binges kept the energy spiking, pushing the sessions into a fever dream of jittery playfulness.”
They must have been wired for weeks! Let’s drop the needle and see how much of that energy was transferred to the grooves.
The album opens with ‘Channel Rot’. A snarling opening salvo that feels like stumbling through a glitching transmission. With a screech of tyres and an assortment of TV shows coming at us, we are off! This is the sound of collapsing signals and sensory overload, where the song’s structure seems to warp around the stop start guitar stabs and skittering synths. A mere taste of the technicolour madness to come.
We are then straight into ‘T.V. Baby’, a satirical screed aimed at screen addiction and information rot. The groove here is furious and feels like its coming at you from every angle. The lyrics are both comic and ominous: “Gimme gimme toxic sugar / I’m a sucker for that fit.” It’s mutant punk with a burnt-out VHS aesthetic, capturing the eerie intimacy of modern media’s brain-melt. If the whole album is at this pace I’m going to need a wee lie down after side A alone.
‘Dead Silence’ next is possibly the album’s emotional nadir. A spiralling descent into noise fatigue and internal static. Vocals echo like thoughts bouncing off concrete walls, while delivering a stark existential punch: “Everything is dead.” It’s bleak at times, but weirdly cathartic. Searching for the escape that saves you from the final escape, the one you can’t come back from. The track keeps tapping that metaphorical elevator button, waiting for something to change, knowing it probably won’t. In this day and age with this epidemic of mental illness and anxiety this is an incredibly well observed track.
Up next is the weaponised frustration of ‘Fucksake’. The rhythm is jagged, the vocal delivery more spit than speech. “What do you think what do you get, for fuck’s sake?” becomes a mantra for digital burnout and bodily disintegration. The track has the swagger of Roxy Music and the industrial punk energy of the MC5. Pure adrenaline and absurdist apocalypse. I can imagine this will get a great call and response at their live shows!
The robot energy is palpable next with ‘Economy’. “This has got to be the best economy,” is almost spat out, dripping with sarcasm. The synths are particularly cool here, sputtering and gurgling like corrupted cash registers. The beat, on the other hand, marches forward with mechanical insistence, mimicking the inescapable churn of the market machine. It’s a dystopian dance-punk commentary on capitalism’s failure to nourish the soul and it cuts like a knife.
We leave the robot energy behind for ‘Eggs Laid Brain’. This is possibly the most surreal cut on the record and that’s saying something. Lyrically it reads like a Lovecraftian satire of human thought. “Sucking out the fun, how tasty,” repeats like a warped nursery rhyme, while the instrumentation slinks and squirms with insectoid menace. It’s psychedelic in the most visceral, bodily sense—a track that feels like it’s crawling inside your skull.
We plummet headlong into ‘Out Of The Flesh’ next. Emotionally raw and vocally twisted. “Come find me curled up like a dying worm” sets the tone. This is self-excavation through noise and melody. Guitars pummel us relentlessly; synths soar and swell. This has amazing energy encapsulating everything I love about Frankie and the Witch Fingers. Riffs, call and response vocals and knowing wink to the audience!
A pixelated war cry from the AI uprising. ‘Total Reset’ is the album’s most explosive track—robotic voices chant apocalyptic prophecies over pounding drums and gleaming synth stabs. It imagines a world where our digital offspring have had enough, where extermination becomes the only resolution. Think Kraftwerk by way of Slayer. Genius! Bonkers but fricken genius.
The band channels their inner B-52s on this sly, sexy romp through power, performance and perception. ‘Conducting Experiments’ is psychedelic disco-punk that plays with gender, identity and authority. “These two women are conducting experiments,” entranced and adrift. The track’s got swagger and sass to spare, and the chorus is an all-timer. Clear the dancefloor Frankie and the Witch Fingers are coming through.
‘Gutter Priestess’ is just pure sleaze and shadow. Think of a Lynchian fever dream involving rituals, spoons, and motel rooms soaked in amber light. The bassline prowls like a predator, vocals are pure menace. The gutter priestess is a mythical avatar of the album’s themes—decay, indulgence, transformation. You’ll feel the leather bite. Down boy!
The title track is a final baptism in the sludge. By this point, you’re just a bit frayed but grinning and loving it, lost in static and slime. “Yet another hole in my head” we hear sung, almost jubilantly, as if trauma has become transcendence. The track oscillates between feral and euphoric, tying things up in an ecstatic roar of warped hope.
Trash Classic is a full-body immersion into chaos, commentary and catharsis. This is a band who’ve always flirted with the edge, but now they’ve leapt right off it, arms flailing, laughing as they fall. Every track on this record pulses with intent. It’s messy, magnetic and malevolent in all the right ways. What Frankie and the Witch Fingers have made here is an album that is both a sonic experiment and an emotional exorcism. It forces you to confront the rot while dancing in it. It mocks our obsession with consumption while sounding like the inside of a melting vending machine. It offers no salvation, just glorious collapse. If you’re ready to rip out the circuits and get weird with the witches, then Trash Classic is the record you’ve been waiting for.
Since their emergence in 2020 with debut single Public Service, Last Tourist have been quietly — but very deliberately — building a discography that reads like a lost volume from the alternative rock archives of a parallel universe. With 2021’s ‘Black Raven’ (featuring the mighty Simon Scott of Slowdive on drums), the spectral ‘Cave in the Hills’, the magnetic ‘Lust’, and a 2023 reimagining of The Cure’s ‘Lullaby’, they’ve mapped out a world that’s as much tethered to the stars as it is to the foundations of noise-rock, post-punk and synth-laced shoegaze.
Their self-titled debut album Last Tourist in 2023 was the culmination of that early journey — a dense, delirious and deeply impressive statement of intent. And now, with ‘Slowly Fade’, they’ve hit escape velocity.
On this release the band have this to say.
“‘Slowly Fade’ shows a darker side of the band leaning towards the darkwave combined with shoegaze reverberating guitars and featuring extract of Ian Curtis last interview before his tragic death.”
Let’s dive in and see where Last Tourist are taking us with this one.
The track begins with what sounds like a transmission from a dying satellite, Curtis’s ghostly voice barely coming through. From the first breathy, echo-drenched vocal line, ‘Slowly Fade’ announces itself as something grander than anything they’ve released before. This isn’t just a new track; it’s the band stepping through the veil into widescreen territory.
The addition of Paul Kehoe (of Peter Hook & The Light) on drums injects a propulsive urgency into the song’s shimmering murk. His playing is all texture and tension — pulsing like an anxious heartbeat beneath the layers of synth and delay.
‘Slowly Fade’ is a stargazer’s delight. There’s a clear lineage to their influences: you hear the moodiness of The Jesus and Mary Chain, the cold pulse of Gary Numan, the layered hypnosis of My Bloody Valentine, the astral ache of Spiritualized, and even the crystalline dread of Suicide. But this isn’t some shoegaze tribute band. Last Tourist aren’t imitating — they’re channelling, mutating, and pushing forward. Oh and let’s talk about the atmosphere — because, this track is thick with it. The fuzz here isn’t just texture — it’s emotion. The synths don’t just sparkle — they mourn. There’s a sadness in this song, but it’s the beautiful kind. The kind you lean into. The kind that makes the dark feel inviting.
The song title itself — ‘Slowly Fade’ — feels like both a threat and a promise. You get the sense that the track is collapsing in on itself, drifting further into space with every passing second.
What’s most exciting about ‘Slowly Fade’ is what it signals. This is a band not content to bask in the cult glow of their early successes. This is a band evolving — leaning harder into ambience, pushing further into abstraction, and yet still anchoring everything with structure, hooks, and feeling.
‘Slowly Fade’ is a deeply impressive track that manages to feel both carefully constructed and utterly effortless. With an upcoming album on the way, ‘Slowly Fade’ feels like the calm before the (beautiful) storm. If this is the direction Last Tourist are heading in, then buckle up, because we’re in for a journey of cosmic proportions.
‘Slowly Fade’ is out on 6th June 2025 on all major digital platforms via 1991 Recordings. Vinyl collectors — keep your eyes peeled for a physical release on their next full-length. You’re going to want this one on wax.
You can follow Last Tourist on social media here …
There’s a certain magic that happens when a band with a reputation for sprawling cosmic grandeur pares things down to their essence. When the incense clears, and the fog machines sputter out, all that’s left is groove, atmosphere, and instinct. With their latest seven inch offering, ‘Bongo Express’ backed with ‘Afternoon Sniper’, The Hologram People have traded their mountaintop ceremonies and starward gazes for something a little more grounded — but no less transporting.
This is a different flavour of trip. Less sacred rite, more international psych-funk caper. Imagine slipping through a late-60s psychedelic heist flick, dubbed straight from reel-to-reel onto wax. There’s a swagger here, a louche confidence that doesn’t shout but smirks from across the room. If Sacred Ritual to Unlock the Mountain Portal was about elevation — spiritual, sonic, stratospheric — then this new double-header is all about the sway. The sway of hips. The sway of shadows. The sway of palm fronds in a sultry breeze that smells faintly of vinyl and vermouth.
And still, unmistakably, this is The Hologram People. Dom Keen and Jonathan Parkes are carving new grooves into the wax, but the hands guiding the stylus are the same — deft, knowing, and gently mischievous. The textures are intact. The attention to sonic detail is all here. But now, the ritual space is a mysterious smoke filled lounge instead of a misty mountain.
On Side A ‘Bongo Express’ is a laid-back, fuzz-fuelled exotic jam that’s thick with Eastern promise. Strutting in like a mirage over hot sands, shimmering guitars dipped in delay, bongo rhythms bubbling beneath like heat from a cracked desert floor. This track isn’t about propulsion — it’s about suspension. You don’t race down the rails here, you glide along them, hypnotised by the swirling blend of eastern-inflected melody and cosmic cool. There’s a narcotic quality to the repetition, something trance-inducing in the way the melody drifts and curls. And that production — lo-fi in all the right places, like it’s being broadcast from a lost psych-funk archive deep beneath Marrakesh. It’s smooth. It’s sensual. It’s The Hologram People doing what they do best: evoking landscapes of the mind.
The flipside slinks in with attitude. ‘Afternoon Sniper’ rides a funky wave of laid-back bass grooves, bouncy bongo, and locked-in drums that carry an irresistible strut. There’s a noirish energy here — playful but a little dangerous. It’s music for the psychic cat burglar in all of us. Where ‘Bongo Express’ conjured dusty sun-soaked travels, ‘Afternoon Sniper’ lives in the twilight. Its groove is loose yet exact, with guitar stabs and echo-drenched melodies dancing in and out of earshot like shadows slipping behind alleyway corners.
What’s so glorious about this release is how effortless it feels. These are two short tracks — modest in scale, yet bursting with atmosphere. With this seven inch, The Hologram People shift from shamanic space travellers to jet-setting psych-groovers, all without missing a beat. They’ve always had the ability to soundtrack journeys both real and imagined, but with ‘Bongo Express’ and ‘Afternoon Sniper’, they invite you not on a pilgrimage, but a holiday — albeit one scored by mystics, draped in incense, and set to tape on a vintage reel-to-reel player in a sun-bleached villa.
So, my fellow psychonauts: grab this one while you can. Limited pressings like this have a habit of vanishing into the ether before you’ve had your morning coffee.
‘Bongo Express’ is out on 27th May 2025 via the ever-amazing Feral Child Label (note to self: they warrant a blog all to themselves). Make sure and head over to The Hologram People Bandcamp Page and give em a follow!
You can follow The Hologram People on social media here….
Static Sounds Club 