sound in bold new directions, “Feels Like Summer” is the first taste of Weezer’s forthcoming eleventh album, due for release later this year.

Weezer will be embarking on a full European tour this autumn, their first since 2005, in addition to headlining London’s prestigious Wembley Arena this October. Prior to that, the band will be playing major festivals throughout the U.S.

In 1992, Weezer had their first practice session in Los Angeles. Over the course of the next year, the group played the club scene, ultimately scoring a deal with DGC from their demo cassette.

Their debut album Weezer (aka “The Blue Album”), producer by Ric Ocasek, has been certified triple platinum in the United States, and remains the band’s all-time best seller. Upon completing the record, Weezer went on hiatus temporarily as Cuomo studied at Harvard. With help from the Spike Jonze-directed video, the single "Undone (The Sweater Song)" became a hit in the fall of 1994. But by the time the album's final single, "Say It Ain't So," was released in the summer of 1995, the group had gone on hiatus once again, with Cuomo returning to Harvard.

On September 24th 1996, Weezer's much-awaited second LP, entitled Pinkerton, was released. It was quite different from 'Weezer'; the guitars were more gruff, the lyrics were deeper and much more exposed, and the band's talent and style had matured considerably. Weezer released three singles from Pinkerton: "El Scorcho", "The Good Life", and "Pink Triangle". Pinkerton eventually went gold in record sales and has been a steady seller since.

With the producer of their debut, Ric Ocasek, again at the helm, Weezer next recorded 2001’s Weezer (aka “The Green Album”), which debuted at #4 and has since sold more than one million copies in the United States. Songs like "Hash Pipe" and "Island in the Sun" became radio and MTV staples. During their tour that summer’s tour, Shriner joined the band.

The band followed that success with Maladroit, which was released in 2002, reached #3 on the Billboard 200, and was certified gold. Two years later, Video Capture Device DVD featured home video footage, music videos, commercials, rehearsals, concert performances, television performances, and band commentary, and was certified "gold" following its 2004 release.

Weezer returned to the studio again to work with Rick Rubin on their fifth full-length album. Make Believe appeared in May 2005 and eventually went platinum in multiple countries. The album gave Weezer their biggest charting album peak yet, hitting #1 in Canada and #2 in the U.S. Make Believe featured the band's first two songs to top the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, "Perfect Situation" and Top 10 single “Beverly Hills,” which earned the band their first Grammy nomination for Best Rock Song.

2008’s Weezer, (aka “The Red Album”) followed which featured a more collaborative approach toward songwriting and shared lead vocals on tracks. Lead single "Pork and Beans" topped the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks charts for 11 weeks, and its music video won a Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video. The Red Album debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200 upon its release.

One year later, the band returned with Raditude, which debuted as the seventh best-selling album of the week on the Billboard 200 chart. It found the band collaborating with hip-hop producer Jermaine Dupri, rapper Lil Wayne and members of The All-American Rejects.

Weezer jumped from Geffen to independent label Epitaph in 2010, debuting Hurley at #6 on the Billboard 200 to make it the band’s sixth top 10 album, as well as their sixth top 10 album in a row. The new album was quickly followed by two additional releases: an expanded deluxe edition of Pinkerton and Death to False Metal. The band then took to the road to play Pinkerton & their eponymous debut “Blue Album” in their entirety, in full a tour titled “The Memories Tour,” dubbed “Blinkerton” by fans.

Alice grew up on a mountainside in South Africa listening to her parent's records and indulging her love of theatre, arts and music at a local Waldorf school; a formative time that nurtured her independence and desire to experience music of all styles. This multi-faceted creative upbringing mixed with Alice's natural wanderlust and in 2010, 16-year-old Alice made her first journey to Europe during her summer break from school. Inspired by watching fire dancers in Paris, she began to perform likewise to get enough money to fund her travelling.

That summer Alice roamed between Paris and Amsterdam; experiencing the highs and lows of street performances' underbelly. This vagabond lifestyle was a creative inspiration and gave Alice an enduring taste for the immediacy of street crowds. After returning to South Africa to complete her studies, Alice's path led her back to Europe and she made her way to the German capital - Berlin. The freedom of the city was intoxicating and she immersed herself in the creative world there.

Alice began busking across Berlin with just her guitar, a small amplifier on a trolley and her mesmerising voice. Her natural talent and captivating delivery started to garner a cult street following with people coming to see her busk and buy her records. The uncompromising creative community of Berlin also helped Alice grow musically and she collaborated with acoustic, jazz and electronic musicians; including multi-instrumentalist Matteo who quickly became Alice's live performance companion. Soon Alice self-released her first body of work - the Momentum EP - her first collaborative effort recorded between Berlin and Cape Town with five different producers. Although by now interest was sparked with several major labels, Alice's desire to maintain the creative freedom she had fostered kept her focus on growing her digital community of loyal fans and imagining ever more interesting settings for her intimate live shows

Now having spent two years playing intimate gigs across Europe and South Africa, and supporting established like-minded artists like Rodriguez, April 2016 will see Alice releasing her first full length studio album. Orbit comprises nine jazz-influenced, eclectic tracks recorded between Cape Town and Berlin that encapsulate the freshness of her live style, vagabond spirit and showcase her distinctive, soprano voice. Produced by Matteo and Kyson, the album is a testament to Alice's collaborative way of writing and features musicians from South Africa and Europe lending their musical skills and different visual artists producing art works to match each track. The result is an intricately woven pattern of soul, blues and jazz: scattered with retro, beatnik melodies; soothing vocal harmonies and sleazy brass flourishes.

Annabel has performed a number of prestigious slots in the last twelve months, most notably supporting the iconic Beth Ditto across her UK/EU tour at the back end of 2017, as well as sharing the stage with Nadine Shah, Blaenavon and more. Sets at The Great Escape, Live at Leeds and SXSW last year brought her to wider international attention, whilst fiery performances at Boardmasters, Siren Festival, Neverworld and Reading Festival this summer showcased her intent even further, and having just completed her debut UK headline tour, the future looks extremely bright for Allum.

"I was a loose canon," the commanding front woman says. "I was losing serious control of my personal and creative life. I was falling apart, trying to escape. I felt like Bleached was the only thing I actually cared about."

The 10-song LP was born out of triple the amount of demos. Sometimes the three girls spent time writing at a remote house in Joshua Tree away from the seemingly destructive city (a first since bassist Micayla had never contributed to songwriting on previous releases.) Other times Jen and Jessie worked alone, just like when they were teenaged punk brats playing in their parent's San Fernando Valley garage imitating their heroes The Slits, Black Flag and Minor Threat.

In the studio, Chiccarelli and co-producer Carlos de la Garza (Paramore, YACHT) helped the band perfect their fervent songs into fearlessly big pop melodies. They drew inspiration from the iconic hits of everyone from Fleetwood Mac to Heart to Roy Ayers.

They focused on preproduction and challenged the songs. Jessie took her usual approach to guitar over-dubs and leads (her favorite duty in a recording session), "I just let let my fingers play and kind of surprise me," she smirks. Still remaining to keep the band's origin of cheeky, California-punk in the forefront, Welcome The Worms became a smarter, heavier, emotionally deeper Bleached.

"Before we even knew we were working together, I remember Joe saying, you can't lose these melodies, no matter how raw the music gets," Jen explains. She penned demos on an acoustic guitar and focused. "If I was happy [with the songs] in [their] rawest form, then I knew it would be even better after going through production."

"I've become a more confident musician," adds Jessie. "I wanted to be open-minded to this record and try new things we hadn't done before. I felt such a great amount of respect working with the people we did on this record, feeling really free to do what I wanted to do, and making it a Bleached world."

Welcome The Worms is an ambitious rock record with a new found pop refinement that somehow still feels like the Shangri-Las on speed, driven forward in a wind of pot and petals, a wall of guitars in the back seat. "Keep on Keepin' On" is a hypnotic opening anthem that spins like a kaleidoscope, while "Sleepwalking" and “Trying To Lose Myself Again” invoke the struggle of floating through life on autopilot. The drums are instinctual, while the bass bounces like a rubber ball over the lyrics on a karaoke screen. "Sour Candy" is a stand-out hit so effortless and catchy it sticks in your head for days. Synth is only brought in as a thickening agent, just like the harmonies. "Chemical Air" and "I'm All Over The Place (Mystic Mama)" toy with pop sensibilities, while "Desolate Town" shows Jen getting weird on the verses before a Cobain-like chorus.

Through out the record, Bleached paints a frivolous picture of Los Angeles: the life of eye-rolling caused by dating men in bands, dirty Sunset Boulevard and futile drunken nights in a starstruck hole that made everyone from Charles Manson to Darby Crash to Marilyn Monroe stare up at the Hollywood sign for direction. Although a typical theme of ruined romance floats through the album, the real power is in Jen figuring out herself through lyrics so straight, identifiable and honest. This was a first for the girl who safely hid behind a cheeky misdemeanor. She did a lot of messing up and even more digging into herself.

“Sometimes [writing this album] made me hate myself and sometimes it made me love myself,” she admits. “But being aware of how I felt is what I wanted.” It became clear that Jen had to embrace the good with the horrible and learn to overcome it all through music.

One evening, high on psychedelics and up all night, Jen and a friend passed a freaky couple at Echo Park Lake peddling homemade religious pamphlets. “One page was a bunch of cut and paste sentences with images. I’m always really intrigued by those crazy DIY religious books. It all was so perfect at that moment [because] it was about embracing the dark side of life instead of  pretending it isn’t there because it’s all beautiful and I wouldn’t give any of it up for anything.” Welcome The Worms was sprawled across the tripped out pamphlet. The phrase stuck.

"We don't want perfection because it's boring," she continues. "We want to make music that's as real as life."

- Mish Way

At the end of 2010 Draper released his first digital EP, ‘The Introduction’, which received vibrant online success and brought him to the attention of Bring Me The Horizon front man, Oliver Sykes, who expressed interest in working together.

Following a successful live performance with the band at Brixton Academy, Draper began writing sections for the bands’ live sets. In 2012, just out of university, Draper joined Rita Ora at Capitol Radio Summer Ball and performed to a sold out Wembley Stadium. Since then Draper has become one of the most sought after production and writing talents, embarking on projects with the likes of Itch, Twin Atlantic and All Saints as well as furthering collaborations with Låpsley, having previously written and produced her BBC Sound Poll Shortlisted hit single ‘Falling Short’.

2016 saw Draper reach new heights with ‘Break Over You’, a collaboration with Prides, which was met with critical and commercial acclaim from the likes of BBC Introducing with the track reaching nearly 2 million Spotify plays and retail placements in excess of 8000 stores worldwide.

After a successful summer of festivals and already galvanised in overwhelming radio support from BBC Introducing and Radio 1, 2017 starts with Draper’s presence only increasing with his latest EP ‘Luminous’, released via M:UK. Draper continues his love for collaboration on this EP with features including Sam Sure on ‘Want You More’ and Kyko on recent single ‘IOU’.

Instead, rather its the atmospheres conjured and the unchartered territories explored within each little marvel of a track that comprise his unique vision. The space he creates is mind-bogglingly vast, and one where the brutalist greyscale of his native metropolis meets the warming slipstreams of his bucolic, often amphibious daydreams to alien effect. In his world near-choral incantations battle and marry with minimalist jazz tones, post-rock layering and swaggering beats and couplets in a way that's sometimes experimental, but always enveloping.

Born and raised in Croydon, Jamie discovered at an early age what a powerful form of escapism music could be for him. Joining a successful local choir aged-11, he not only discovered the incredible tone of his own singing voice (yes, those seraphim sounds on 'Softly Draining Seas', are him on backing vocals), but the immersive, transportive properties of truly grand musical composition. "There's something really powerful about performing a huge piece of music that's had so much time and thought put into creating it," he says. "It becomes something you can totally lose yourself within." It was these newly stoked fires that drove him to take his music seriously, earning a place at his local music school and honing in on piano as his primary instrument throughout his teens. It was here that he and his peers began first obsessing with the never-ending vortex of jazz, first with the greats, but before long with the avant-garde minimalism of composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich, whose sense of space and adventure leave their mark across 'I Will Be Cold Soon'.

It was also there that he and his teenage friends, as many do, cultivated a love for the craft of hip hop. Certainly there's a street culture that runs throughout his sonics, from the foundations of Premier and Dilla, through to more evolved UK bass sounds like Mount Kimbie. Before long Jamie would become the one of the most accomplished beat-makers within his peer group, leading to a poignant collaborative relationship with classmate Archy Marshall aka King Krule. Fitting then that this debut will be released via House Anxiety, the same imprint that gave the world Marshall's owndebut in Zoo Kid's 'Out Getting Rib's'. When dealing with musical depth and tender years it's always easy to label this things prodigious, but what's harder to pin-point and more exciting to consider, is if this EP release represents Jamie Isaac's first chapter, then what could the rest of this story possibly resemble.

Johnny first appeared on the scene in 2006 playing in numerous bands and running club nights, but ears were pricked by his first album A Larum, released in 2008.

A widened palette followed with his sophomore album Been Listening along with global touring. Songs such as Lost and Found and The Water (a duet with old friend Laura Marling) cemented his lyrical reputation, and prompted further collaborations with the likes of Anna Calvi, Barbarossa and subsequent production work with Marika Hackman, showcasing his desire to nurture and collaborate with varied and exciting new talent.

Following the album and a stint writing, producing and performing the soundtrack to indie film A Bag of Hammers, Johnny returned to the boards, appearing in Richard Bean’s The Heretic at the Royal Court, Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem alongside Mark Rylance, Richard III and Twelfth Night at The Globe and West End with Stephen Fry and Mark Rylance, before taking the lead in The Low Road by Bruce Norris back at The Royal Court.

Flynn supported the release of his third album, Country Mile, with extensive touring throughout the US and Europe, including a tour in the USA with friends Mumford & Sons, sold out shows across the UK and Europe and a follow up solo tour in the US and Canada, which gave us the Live in Washington DC album. His thespian tendencies have not been neglected either, with a lead in Song One alongside Anne Hathaway released January 2015, and a role in Oliver Assayas' Sils Maria with Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart and Chloe Moretz.

The choice of 'Sillion' as a title for his fourth album was one Flynn reached through a convergence of unlikely forces — of friendship, politics, poetry but it’s a word too that captures much of the album’s colour and mood — its measure of the times.

The word rose up to meet him some time last autumn, post-Brexit, just as America was in the throes of election fever, and the world seemed suddenly upturned. “I had this really visceral, physical sense of needing to go to ground,” Flynn recalls. "And I had a strong sense that the album title had to be earthy and muddy,” Flynn says.

Much of the recording of Sillion was done while Flynn was starring in Martin McDonagh’s play Hangmen. “I was playing a psychopath,” he explains, “so there’s probably some of that darkness in the lyrics, and a celebration that you can explore the baseness of human nature.”

This darkness rises up particularly on the track In the Deepest, which grew out of a film score commission and which Flynn describes as being about “a sense of foreboding … it has such a sense of maleficent drama to it.”

One of the album’s earliest songs is Jefferson’s Torch, when Flynn found himself “trying to write something political.” This was long before Brexit, long before Trump. “But I was reading about lighting the torch for all mankind and about revolution happening every two generations,” he recalls.

For all of Sillion’s political grounding, it is an album of great intimacy too. The opening track, Raising the Dead, tells of Flynn getting to know his new-born daughter.

Heart Sunk allowed Flynn to try out a Voice-o-Graph — the recording booth popular in the 1940s which gave people two flat minutes to make a record. “There’s only two working in the world and there was one in London for a time and I had a chance to have a go in it and that wavy, crackly recording on this song is the recording I made. It sounds like the old Blues records I love. I wanted a sense of time travel in the song, panning from the Voice-o-Graph to the studio recording — at one point there’s one in each ear.”

He found inspiration also, he says, in Jez Butterworth’s play The River. “I’ve always been obsessed with the mysterious experiences you have alone in nature. I grew up by a river and my Dad and I would go poaching”

And the figure of Robert Macfarlane appears once again for Tarp in the Prop. Macfarlane and Flynn had been invited to take part in a series of conversations between writers and musicians at St Andrew’s University.

This is, by some measure, an unusual album. But it is run through with great love and great passion for nature and humour and mankind, for all the silly and base and wonderful things we do. As Flynn put it, describing that same word, Sillion, “it’s about the sacredness of man’s endeavour to connect with the earth while in separation from the earth."

This isn’t the America of goofy teen movies, Twinkies and Trump, no Mam. It's that shattered dreamland Hunter S. Thompson went looking for... It's somewhere beyond the pines of Twin Peaks at a crossroads where Badlands met Paris, Texas. A dustball in a once great land, reimagined whilst daydreaming as the towns and plains filtered through the grainy dirt that is the tour bus window during laps of the USA with Coldplay and The Killers.

These are songs from a dark-hearted country, where the lights of Nashville twinkle in the distance as the siren song leads you into the eternal night...

Her debut long player 'Rooms With Walls and Windows' was a true modern-day word of mouth success and was voted number 7 in Mojo's best albums of the year and Huffington Post called it "2014's Great American Album". A stunning set of front porch psych-folk that unknowingly recalled the greats but very much for our time.

Following US and European jaunts to help spread the word, Byrne returned to her family homestead in Buffalo (and currently calls New York home) to craft her follow up, 'Not Even Happiness'. Offering an altogether bigger picture to its predecessor through a wider, yet subtle, exploration of instruments and atmospherics, the album reveals an artist who has grown in confidence over time. It's due for release in January 2017 on a new imprint Basin Rock and is confirmed for Rough Trade's Album of the Month selection. First single 'Natural Blue' picked up plenty of attention including Pitchfork's Best New Track.

In the live arena she enchants, leaving rooms and festival crowds mesmerised by her voice who find a real connection with Byrne's intimate songs. This feeling and experience is often reciprocated.

"With grace and acuity, Byrne shows how the most commonplace aspects of life can turn supernatural if you tilt your eye a way, how the simplest things—melodies, open space, the sky—are often the strongest.” Pitchfork

This seachangeis reflected on the EP’s stunning psych-folk-rock opener, a ballsy 18-minute track (yes eighteen minutes) that onjures desert visions of Crazy Horse guitar solos, David Crosby’s mustache, and all the good things about a journey through the past on mescaline. Matt actually grew up in Austin (and Dana Point, CA too) and the song is a slice of his life--an autobiography that isn’t even close to being finished-- an epic American saga that reflects his skill as a remarkable modern songwriter still on the rise. If Richard Linklater could write a song, this would be it.

"Matt’s voice and words have that Nashville outcast vibe to it,” says Jay Sweet, producer of the Newport Folk Festival and a longtime champion of Matt’s music. “He’s not California, he’s not Texas, he’s not Brooklyn—even though he’s lived in all of those places. He’s a transplant and a vagabond, which is why he embodies folk and rock music. For a singersongwriter,

he is truly refreshing."

Matt went solo for simple reasons-- to return to the style of rock he loves. And when he went solo he REALLY went solo. He plays every instrument on the record, except for two drum tracks and one guitar track. Delta Spirit undoubtedly will be back but he wanted to make a collection of music without the influence of his beloved brethren (it's only natural for a frontman to feel the need to let loose from time to time). You will hear his new material and you will hear Iggy Pop. Neil Young. Kurt Cobain. Gram Parsons. But ultimately, you're hearing Matthew Logan Vasquez. A man young at heart, who

loves the shit out of rock music... loves it so much that it's been his life's goal to make the masses reconnect with her spirit.

But he's become a father, and he's been through some shit. His dad was a bomb builder. Fact.

At the end of the day, Matt’s objective as a singer, a poet, a preacher, a believer in this beautiful bullshit we call “RocknRoll,” is to find some harmony through life’s confusion and to make you feel good about yourself. He'll be spreading his message via his wonderful songs starting in the fall of 2015. You better go put your dimes in his collectionbasket. Are there better things you can be doin with those dimes?

Behold the concept behind Preachers, the second full-length release from Austin's My Jerusalem. From the opening piano of the haunting title track, to the unexpected pummeling guitar and drums on closer “I Left My Conscience In You”, Preachers leads the listener on a cinematic journey through a reckless, jagged landscape of Raymond Carver-esque stories, fueled by Klein’s persuasive baritone, ominous guitars, dream-like keyboards and a deep rhythmic pulse.

Recorded in under three weeks by Spoon drummer Jim Eno (Heartless Bastards, Polica, Black Joe Lewis) at his Public Hi-Fi studio, Preachers is the first My Jerusalem album genuinely made by a band, not just performed by a group of musicians. Pushing aside hard drives and laptops to make way for analog tape machines and vintage keyboards, what Klein describes as the “Post-Modern Southern Gothic Soul” sounds of Preachers were born from organic, live performances Eno carefully captured and tweaked.

Preachers is the follow-up to 2010’s critically acclaimed debut, Gone For Good, an album that earned the band performances on BBC Radio 6 and Daytrotter, as well as notices from NPR's All Songs Considered, AOL/Spinner's Song of the Day, and the iTunes Weekly Rewind. Along with European festival appearances at the Frequency Festival, Musikfestwochen, and Rock Im Saal, the band toured and played shows with a eclectic set of bands including Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Har Mar Superstar, Avett Brothers, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and White Arrows.

Buoyed by the success of Gone For Good, Preachers showcases a band headed into the studio with a renewed focus and confidence. Preachers contains equal parts swagger (the swampy gospel of title track “Preachers”, the strutting intensity of “Born In The Belly”) and groove (the spooky beauty of “Shatter Together”, the crescendoing, feral drive of “Devoe”, the infectious crooner “Mono”); as much primal (“Death Valley”) as it is humane ("Chameleon").

“It’s a darker record,” says Klein, who, before forming My Jerusalem in 2010, made 3 records under his own name. “So much had changed since Gone For Good. We’d all kind of been through hell and back again in different ways, and this was the natural artistic result of all of that. But I think it’s a beautiful, comforting darkness. It’s real, but not selfish.”

“We finally have a shared collective vibe,” adds guitarist/keyboardist Jon Merz, “I believe it’s more representative of what our live shows sound like. This time around, Jeff would bring us song ideas and we would add our own perspectives to it.”

The five-piece, which also features multi-instrumentalist Michael St. Clair, drummer Grant Van Amburgh, and bassist Geena Spigarelli, also had the opportunity to road-test much of the new material before recording, during their extensive touring behind Gone For Good. It was a luxury they didn’t have the first time around.

"Working out the kinks live before recording them makes a big difference," reflects Klein, “They get a chance to breathe and grow before committing them to the world permanently. Because of that process, some songs, like 'Death Valley,' sound nothing like their early version. We’re excited to take them on the road and see how they evolve even further.”

Equal parts sweet, morbid, strange, and sincere, Preachers is an experience that could convert the most steadfast of non-believers.

Make no mistake: their new album Who Sold My Generation sounds like it has been created against a backdrop of burning Stars and Stripes flags and with the whiff of napalm hanging in the air - an alternative universe where ‘Helter Skelter’ is the national anthem and Charlie Manson is still on the loose. Acid-test heaviness is Night Beats’ currency, but this is no out-right nostalgia trip either. Instead of Nixon and Vietnam, Night Beats have their own epoch of God and guns and bombs and drones to rail against...or flee from. Besides, bad vibrations, blues jams and id-shattering explorations are timeless pursuits – why shouldn’t today’s young generation be allowed to take a ride down the slippery spiral that sits within the centre of each of us?

On their third album – and first for Heavenly Recordings - Night Beats perhaps most recall their Texan forefathers and psyche-rock originators 13th Floor Elevators at their ‘69 peak, just before The Man busted young Roky Erickson and dragged him to the psyche ward for barbaric doses of shock treatment. These boys represent the best of the Lone Star State’s flipside – that vast dusty hinterland of the soul where it’s easy to drift off the map and reinvent yourself as part of the long lineage of creative cowboys who prefer psychotropics to rodeo riding, guitars rather than firearms.

“Old cowboy culture is alive and well in Texas,” says frontman Danny Lee Blackwell. “I grew up with Texan mythology all around us, so as a band its instilled in our blood. My Dad didn’t wrangle steers but he did pick cotton when he was young. But then cities like Austin and Dallas, where we spent most of our time growing up, have a real sense of musical history that runs deep, so we feed off that legacy too.”

From the Elevators and The Red Krayola on to pre-ZZ Top band The Moving Sidewalks, Butthole Surfers and The Black Angels – whose record label Reverb Appreciation Society have released Night Beats - and a clutch of other early cult bands besides (Bubble Puppy, Shiva’s Headband and the Golden Dawn, anyone?), Texas has always been a prime breeding ground for such outlaw music. “The Elevators were one of the reasons I decided to become a singer and form the group,” says Blackwell. “I loved their attempt to play R ‘n’ B music, but from a distinctly Texan approach. I'd say they have profoundly influenced the group, but it’s now our job to take it to another level in a new age.”

It took a cross-country relocation to instigate their formation. Night Beats were born when frontman Danny Lee Blackwell upped stick from Dallas to Seattle, Washington and was soon joined by childhood friend James Traeger. “James got me a copy of Ginsberg's Howl when I was around 15 and it changed everything,” remembers Blackwell of his old friend. “We grew up together and once he moved up to Seattle we did everything together there too. I wanted to try out a different place, a new city, where no one knew my music and there wasn't anything remotely similar going on. Coming from Dallas, Austin seemed like the obvious choice but I needed something more. Seattle was at one time the home to people we love like Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix and Quincy Jones so I didn't feel too disconnected.”

The two existed initially as a guitar and drums duo, named in honour of Sam Cooke’s 1963 album Night Beat, before fellow Dallas resident Jakob Bowden joined on bass after a stint in Austin. Filtering a collective love of pioneering artists as disparate as Buddy Holly, Fela Kuti, Etta James, James Brown and Leonard Cohen, Night Beats dropped a clutch of singles, split-singles, cassette release and two albums – their self-titled debut in 2011 followed by Sonic Bloom in 2013 – as well as featuring on all manner of compilation albums that document the cutting edge of the head-bending, modern counter-cultural US underground.

Night Beats hit the road too, touring extensively with Roky Erickson, The Zombies, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Strange Boys, Black Lips, The Growlers and The Black Angels in North America, Europe, Israel, South Africa and Australia.

Recorded on old two-inch tape in Echo Park, Los Angeles at the home of producer Nic Jodoin and featuring co-production and guess bass playing from Robert Levon Been of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, new album Who Sold My Generation goes beyond merely being a retreading of well-worn garage / R&B path. Instead it offers a contemporary take on the psychedelic experience, a heady set of hoodoo voodoo songs. Mordant and corrosive opener ‘Celebration #1’ sets the tone with its wailing guitar jams and Messiah-like monologue, while ‘No Cops’ makes like the imaginary soundtrack to an orgiastic party somewhere in the LA hills as the summer of love gave way to an era of greed and paranoia. ‘Sunday Mourning’ is the sound of blood dripping on the twitching remains of a generation’s super ego and with a rockabilly strut, ‘Egypt Berry’ chases the White Rabbit down into a cosmic underworld while shaking its burning tail feathers

With new Who Sold My Generation, Night Beats have not only painted it black, they’ve torched the fucker and driven it off the cliff, crashing and burning into the arid canyon below.

In its afterglow only the lone howl of a solitary coyote remains.

DIY MAGAZINE (UK) album review of CEMETERY HIGHRISE SLUM (4/5): “A fine encapsulation of their alluring, unsettling blend of melody and misanthropy. Disorienting and satisfying in equal measure”

CONSEQUENCE OF SOUND album review of CEMETERY HIGHRISE SLUM: “Cemetery Highrise Slum matches its dark title and then some, full of pain, angst and grime.”

THE KEY (WXPN/PHILADELPHIA) album review of CEMETERY HIGHRISE SLUM: “Creepoid frontman Sean Miller doesn’t sing about depressing bars, but he can make you think of everything else that’s dreary – and make it sound absolutely beautiful. Behind his fed-up, rebellious drawl, his bandmates craft vast, dramatic surges of distortion and feedback. It’s mean, it’s heartbreaking, it’s grunge, it’s shoegaze, it all spirals into blinding noise we listen to for pleasure. And never has pain tasted so sweet.”