Pop International

Artist: Various Artists Label: Sonar Kollektiv

Composer: Ton Steine Scherben Label: David Volksmund (Indigo)

Artist: Lissie Label: Cooking Vinyl

Artist: Lee Hazlewood Label: Light in the Attic

Artist: Adriano Celentano and friends Label: Promo Sound

Downloadcode. Lubomyr Melnyk is a Ukrainian composer and pianist who has pioneered ‘Continuous Piano Music’. Classically trained and greatly affected by the minimalist movement in the early 1970s, he has developed his own unique language for the piano, named after the principle of maintaining a continuous, unbroken stream of sound. Lubomyr Melnyk is a true innovator, exploring new directions for contemporary music. Not only is he regarded as one of the world’s fastest concert pianists, his compositions also truly carry the listener to new realms. To witness one of his rare live performances is nothing short of a mind-opening experience. Melnyk has shown a remarkable devotion to the instrument, always striving to discover new ways of composing music in the continuous mode. His focus is on the actual sound of the piano as much as the harmonies and melodies of the music. Using rapid and complex note patterns, Lubomyr's virtuoso piano technique forms overtones that blend, collide or even create new melodies in rare moments, and thereby shape the composition beyond its original form. To accomplish this requires a special technique, one that has taken him many years to master. April 2013 saw Lubomyr Melnyk's his first release on UK label Erased Tapes. Entitled 'Corollaries', the album was recorded and produced by Peter Broderick with the additional help of Nils Frahm and Martyn Heyne. Erased Tapes founder Robert Raths knew it was time to share the great musical legacy of Melnyk, to which he simply responded: ‘Where were you guys when I was thirty?’ With his new studio album, ‘Rivers and Streams’ out November 27, Lubomyr focuses deeply on this connection to water, to the point where the music itself begins to embody its liquid form. Record Label: Erased Tapes Style: Pop

LP includes 18x24'' art poster! Lil BUB has had her paws in the music world for quite some time now. She's tight with Steve Albini, produced a single for Kelley Deal, worked closely with David Yow, collaborated with Andrew W.K., spearheaded 50 Bands and a Cat (she's the cat), been held by Jonathan Richman, has a song written for her by Kimya Dawson, was rapped about by Aesop Rock, enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner with Murder by Death, appeared in The Foo Fighters' HBO Documentary, "Sonic Highways", was the July, 2014 cover story for SPIN Magazine, and famously appears on Run the Jewels' highly anticipated "Meow the Jewels" record made up entirely of cat sounds. And now she's finally ready to blow minds with the very first full length concept album written by a magical space cat, and it's darn good. This is music made by a magical space cat. The songs on this album are the soundtrack to BUB's universal adventure, and a soundtrack to the universe itself. You'll feel transported by the music's stimulating spirit, and taken to places beyond your imagination's limits, all the while experiencing the sonic aura of BUB's loving and compassionate presence. Record Label: Joyful Noise / Sc Style: Electronic

The Dolby Decades is the follow up to The Yamaha Years. Twenty top tunes from Sheffield’s finest solo performer including: Three Men In A Van, I Can’t Go Back To Savoury Now, Disaffected Youth, Mutiny Over The Bounty and Scenes From South Yorkshire. A substantial fan base for this artist will ensure the album reaches unheard of heights. Now for the first time on vinyl with six bonus tracks! Record Label: Free Range Product Style: Synth Pop

In the sky will be seen a fire, dragging a tail of sparks...” Just as Nostradamus prophesised in his quatrains, The Comet Is Coming: “The great star for seven days will burn, the cloud will cause two suns to appear and the big mastiff all night will howl.” End times are upon us people, but Danalogue The Conqueror, Betamax Killer and King Shabaka are here to spread light and joy and fire, for they are The Comet Is Coming. Marvel! As great jolts of electricity burst forth from their fingers. Gasp! As their lungs expel musical mantras as seismic as an earthquake, as heady as a timeless ritual. Swoon! At the sheer interplanetary vastness of their cosmic explosion of polyrhythmic sound and head-bending colour. And get down with it on their debut EP Prophecy. Purveyors of freak-out space funk, The Comet Is Coming are a musical metaphor for society as it speeds towards meltdown like a fireball on an unalterable collision course. For it has been written. In 1682 and 1757. In 1997 and 2020 and 2148. Just like Halley’s Comet and Hale-Bopp before them, this trio are here to blaze a trail across the firmament, smash through the atmosphere and rocket off into unknown territories on a one-way ticket to the centre of the mind’s third eye. This is no doom-trip though; it’s last night of the earth party-time, babes. It’s a Prophecy. Five tracks of freewheeling psychedelia and honking jazz punk mayhem is your soundtrack. Strap in and lift-off to the dizzying ‘Neon Baby’. Slip down the helter skelter wormhole of ‘Star Exploding In Slow Motion’ and wake up dazed on a verdant astral plane in time to ‘Do The Milky Way’. Moon-bathe in a sonic Sea of Tranquility that is ‘Cosmic Serpent’ and comedown to the dark ambient state-of-the-universe address that is ‘Final Days Of The Apocalypse’. But most importantly: hit the floor and shake it like there’s no tomorrow. Here is the universe in a microcosm; the life-force distilled down to its raw essence: sex and dancing. Sub-bass, slamming analogue, unhinged sax breaks. The rhythm of life. Armageddon is coming: what better way to spend it than letting our brave young voyagers take you on a topographical journey of a different bent? These three planets aligned in 2013, having between them played with bands including Melt Yourself Down, Soccer96, Sons Of Kemet and Polar Bear, and a plethora of other projects. Sonic comparisons? Near impossible. But let’s at least throw in Space Invaders, ‘70s sci-fi films, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, post-punk, ‘80s dance and electronica as guiding beacons of light. “There will be fiery explosions in the skies,” said Nostradamus. “Great slaughter, then triumph and festive celebrations.” The Comet Is Coming. The celebration has begun. For it has been written. Record Label: Leaf Style: Pop

Record Label: Jippie! Style: Pop

Composer: Fraktus Label: Staatsakt (Universal Music)

Artist: die Liga der Gewöhnlichen Gentlemen Label: Tapete (Indigo)

Artist: Kelela Label: Warp

Artist: die Liga der Gewöhnlichen Gentlemen Label: Tapete (Indigo)

Artist: Grimes Label: 4AD

Artist: Aino Löwenmark Label: Traumton (Indigo)

Artist: Images at Twilight Label: Indie Recordings

Record Label: Tin Angel Style: Pop

When the national radio broadcaster Triple J unearthed Boy & Bear in 2009, the zeitgeist snatched them up, up, up. Not only did their name feature a creature of the American woods at a time when foxes, deer, wolves and bears of both panda and grizzly breeds were in high demand, but their music matched the family-friendly folk-pop thus signified. Boy & Bear’s 2013 album Harlequin Dream had a bit of Bruce Springsteen’s everyman allure and a bit of Fleetwood Mac’s guilty pleasure party vibe. They shied short of whistling but, still, the five men from Sydney’s northern beaches seemed one Blundstone boot away from writing a world-conquering anthem like Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. They didn’t, but Harlequin Dream did debut at No 1 on the Aria charts. Limit of Love, however, doesn’t test anyone’s limits. To its merit, it is crisper and less rustic than the previous two albums. The single Walk the Wire encapsulates this sensation best. It leaps from the starting gates as sleek and hungry as a Melbourne Cup favourite no one can wrest their eyes from until it streaks past the finishing line. There are only two synthesiser notes and a handful more on guitar and bass but they’re so effective they seem lab-tested. This song is impossible not to like – Boy & Bear know this, everyone knows this. Limit of Love will polarise no one. It will bring daytime-dancing bliss to sunburnt festival crowds and it will be played a lot on the radio. The album has already hit No 1 on the Aria charts. And the guys will cram genially into radio studios – pros, by now – and talk about how it was recorded with minimal fuss in Peter Gabriel’s Real World studio and, later, in a rental on the New South Wales south coast, an experience Hoskings describes in the press release as: “Just being with the boys, in a space where you have gear set up, you have fridge full of great food and wine, playing music and surfing.” Record Label: Nettwerk Style: Folk / Pop

The Tiger Lillies re-tell this classic novel from Berlin in the Weimar years, also performing it as a stage show in Frankfurt A year on from their World War I concept album A Dream Turns Sour, which was very well received both in the UK and when the band toured overseas, The Tiger Lillies are back with a musical side-swipe at love, death, desire and corruption. The Story of Franz Biberkopf is enjoying a long stage-run in Frankfurt with the band performing the songs from the album every night there. The inspiration for this album came from the tragic-ironic life of Franz Biberkopf, the hero of German writer Alfred Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, one of the most important novels to come out of the Weimar Republic. In this way it joins the company of earlier Tiger Lillies albums in the band’s growing repertoire of work inspired by literary classics, such as Hamlet, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and of course the award-winning Shockheaded Peter. Our hero Franz is a petty crook, just out of prison and adrift in the depravity of inter-war Berlin, who eventually finds some stability when he falls in with a kindly prostitute. But things go wrong when she gets murdered, and Franz understands he can never escape the criminal underworld. These themes of the dregs of human existence all find their fond corners in the songwriting imagination of Tiger Lillies' founder and front-man Martyn Jaques, who had sympathetic work here making an album of songs about poor, unfortunate Franz. He then acts as our tour guide as the next few songs take us round the hopeless and the fallen of Berlin. To add as well, this album about Berlin was also produced there, recorded and mastered by Timm Brockmann at Studio 64, with extra work done at Blurt Studios in London. Martyn Jaques is on vocals, accordion, piano, organ and guitar, Adrian Stout on double bass, musical saw and jaw harp, with Timothy Remfrey on drums. The trio are joined by Suzana Bradaric and Axel Ruhland on strings, Ole Tholen on saxophone and Timm again on synthesiser and sampler, organ and percussion. Record Label: Misery Guts Music Style: Indie Pop